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Plot polygon in 3D with rgl

3 messages · Remko Duursma, Duncan Murdoch

#
Dear R-helpers, an rgl-ers in particular,


what is the easiest way to plot a section of a plane in 3D, that is
given by the xyz coordinates of the outline?

Suppose I have a polygon - which I know for sure is a set of
coordinates on the same plane. One method I found is to use surf.tri
from the geometry package, and then plot the triangles with
rgl.triangles. This method is not perfect though, because it makes the
convex hull - no good for the polygon below.

thanks for your help,

Remko

# Example polygon in 3D (matrix with tree columns x,y,z)
m <- structure(c(-24.71, -36.45, -59.54, -83.97, -112.63, -126.66,
-152.79, -171.04, -178.92, -183.71, -189.27, -191.56, -195.98,
-203.09, -207.89, -212.12, -216.92, -221.73, -210.58, -199.43,
-195.58, -175.38, -161.72, -152.09, -140.75, -123.63, -97.87,
-79.04, -69.63, -61.75, -54.08, -38.34, -30.47, -24.71, -15.44,
-13.33, -14.26, -17.39, -24.5, -31.92, -52.3, -70.45, -79.41,
-89.16, -102.08, -111.61, -119.76, -125.55, -128.56, -132.55,
-135.55, -138.55, -132.93, -127.31, -124.91, -125.78, -126.69,
-127.42, -124.38, -117.74, -105.69, -88.52, -79.94, -70.97, -59.43,
-34.75, -25.78, -15.44, 689.49, 686.54, 680.81, 674.79, 667.78,
664.42, 658.27, 654.05, 652.25, 651.22, 650.06, 649.66, 648.7,
647.04, 645.89, 644.91, 643.77, 642.63, 645.3, 647.98, 648.89,
653.93, 657.35, 659.75, 662.52, 666.66, 672.86, 677.25, 679.44,
681.24, 682.95, 686.44, 688.24, 689.49), .Dim = c(34L, 3L))

# One (wrong) way
library(geometry)
tm <- t(surf.tri(m, delaunayn(m)))
plot3d(m[,1],m[,2],m[,3], type='l', col="black", size=2)
rgl.triangles(m[tm, 1], m[tm, 2], m[tm, 3],  col="green")






-------------------------------------------------
Remko Duursma
Research Lecturer

Centre for Plants and the Environment
University of Western Sydney
Hawkesbury Campus
Richmond NSW 2753

Dept of Biological Science
Macquarie University
North Ryde NSW 2109
Australia

Mobile: +61 (0)422 096908
www.remkoduursma.com
#
On 09/05/2010 6:41 PM, Remko Duursma wrote:
There's a function triangulate() in the gpclib package that can 
triangulate a 2d polygon.  So you could pick two out of your three 
dimensions, triangulate those, then compute the 3rd coordinate from a 
fitted plane to the other two.  For example:

library(gpclib)
x <- m[,1]
y <- m[,2]
z <- m[,3]
triangles <- triangulate(as(cbind(x,y), "gpc.poly"))
zfit <- predict(lm(z ~ x + y), newdata=data.frame(x=triangles[,1], 
y=triangles[,2]))
triangles3d(cbind(triangles, zfit), col="green")

Duncan Murdoch
#
Duncan,

thanks for the tip! I actually saw this 2D function but had no idea
how to use it in 3D. Works great.


Remko


-------------------------------------------------
Remko Duursma
Research Lecturer

Centre for Plants and the Environment
University of Western Sydney
Hawkesbury Campus
Richmond NSW 2753

Dept of Biological Science
Macquarie University
North Ryde NSW 2109
Australia

Mobile: +61 (0)422 096908
www.remkoduursma.com



On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote: