Orthogonal Project on Surface

Dependencies

This node requires SciPy library to work.

Functionality

This node finds an orthogonal projection of a point onto a surface, i.e. a point on a surface such that the vector connecting to the provided point and the point on surface is perpendicular to the surface.

If there are several such points on a surface, the node will return the nearest of them. If there are several nearest points, the node will return any of them (not guaranteed which one).

The node uses a numerical method to find such point, so it may be not very fast. If you happen to know how to find such point for your specific surface by formulas, that way will be faster and more precise.

Inputs

This node has the following inputs:

• Surface. The surface to find orthogonal projection onto. This input is mandatory.

• Point. The point to find the orthogonal projection from. The default value is (0, 0, 0).

Parameters

This node has the following parameter:

• Init Resolution. This defines the number of samples to use at the first stage of algorithm, to find the initial guess. The higher the value is, the more precise the initial guess will be, so less work for the numerical algorithm; but the more time will this initial step take. In most cases, you do not have to change this parameter. The default value is 5.

Outputs

This node has the following outputs:

• Point. The orthogonal projection point on a surface, in 3D space.

• UVPoint. The point in surface’s U/V space, which corresponds to the found orthogonal projection point. Z coordinate of this output is always zero. X and Y correspond to U and V.

Examples

• Generator-> Segment

• Generator-> Plane

• Surfaces-> Minimal Surface

• Surfaces-> Surface Frame

• Surfaces-> Evaluate Surface

• Transform-> Noise Displace

• Matrix-> Matrix In

• Matrix Multiply: Matrix-> Matrix Math

• Viz-> Viewer Draw