[PD] Find distance to a line in 3d space

[João Pais]

Am 06.12.2013, 00:51 Uhr, schrieb Claude Heiland-Allen <claude at mathr.co.uk>:

> On 05/12/13 23:40, João Pais wrote:
>> Hello list,
>>
>> I had a doubt, will try to explain.
>>
>> I wanted to define a line in a 3d space through 2 points, and be able to
>> find out the distance from another point to that line. Since I'm very
>> bad at math, I wanted to know if anyone has done something similar, or
>> knows how to get to it.
>
> http://paulbourke.net/geometry/pointlineplane/
>
> first example on the page, you just need to clamp u to [0..1] if you
> want to make it work for a line segment instead of an infinite line.

it looks interesting, and I also checked for more content with a similar title. the thing is, my math/geometry skills are too bad, and I don't understand where they get the formulas for the points and lines. I'll keep watching the links, but I might not get it in time for the purpose I was looking for.

thanks anyway,

João