Description

Identifies the point on a vector closest to a line

l1 and l2 specify a line segment which goes through both points. This line segment is extended to be a line of infinite length. getPointClosestTo will orthogonally project p onto this line to return the point which is closest to p and l1-l2.

Note that the point returned can be outside of the line segment l1-l2.

Functional area

Math

Command syntax

Syntax

getPointClosestTo vector1 vector2 vector3

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Comments
`vector1`	vector	yes	The first endpoint of the vector which is constructed from vector1 and vector2
`vector2`	vector	yes	The second endpoint of the vector which is constructed from vector1 and vector2
`vector3`	vector	yes	The point in space for which the user wants to find the closest point on the line from vector1 and vector2

Flags

None

Return value

vector

Returns a variable of type vector which is the point on the line from vector1 and vector2 that is closest to vector3.

Examples

vector $l1 = <<1, 0, 0>>;
vector $l2 = <<0, 1, 0>>;
vector $o = <<0, 0, 0>>; 
// l1 and l2 form a line of slope -1 in the X-Y plane
// that goes through both points l1 and l2. o is the origin. 
// The point on the line closest to the origin is <<0.5, 0.5, 0>>
print(getPointClosestTo($l1, $l2, $o));
 
// This example shows that you can get a point outside of the line
// segment delineated by l1-l2 (the closest point to the line segment
// would be l2, but the closest point to the line of infinite length
// is <<-0.5, 1.5, 0>>)
vector $p = <<-1, 1, 0>>;
print(getPointClosestTo($l1, $l2, $p));

Additional information

Related commands

getAngleTo