FACET_VERTICES_TO_PLANE

FACET_VERTICES_TO_PLANE_COEFFICIENTS

Name

FACET_VERTICES_TO_PLANE_COEFFICIENTS

Purpose

This function will compute the coefficients of a plane equation of the form
Ax + By + Cz + D = 0
from a set of triangilar facet vertices. The surface normal can also be
computed if desired.

Calling Sequence

Result = FACET_VERTICES_TO_PLANE_COEFFICIENTS( vertices,
FACET_NORMAL=facetNormal,
NORMALIZE=normalize )

Inputs

vertices
A structure containing the vertices of a triangular facet - the tags
are POINT1, POINT2, and POINT3 and these represent the 3-dimensional
coordinates, defined as a 3-element vector, for the vertices in
counter-clockwise order so that the right-hand rule holds for defining
the surface normal

Keyword Parameters

FACET_NORMAL
This keyword will define a named variable that will contain the surface
normal upon completion of this routine
NORMALIZE
This keyword, used in combination with FACET_NORMAL, will cause the
surface normal vector to be a unit vector

Result

Result will be a 4-element vector containing the coefficients of the plane
equation of the form [A, B, C, D].

Side Effects

None

Requires

NORMALIZE

Modification History

Written by: Carl Salvaggio
September, 2009 Original code

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