[vtkusers] retrieving Normal of selected cell or point on a mesh

[Alberto Bartesaghi]

Chris,

> 1) is there any way to plot the shortest distance between 2 points while
> the line remained lying on the surface of the mesh or just to get rid of 
> the staircasing?  I don't really want the polyline going along the 
> boundaries of the triangles... instead I'd like it to cut through those 
> triangles in order to get the shortest distance..

I have a couple of "vtk like" classes to do exactly this, i.e. draw
the true geodesic line between two given points on the surface. The
path is not restricted to go through triangle edges, it goes along the
true geodesic. To see how it works, there's an application using those
classes, check it at http://www.iie.edu.uy/~abarte/curves.htm

Let me know if you are interested.

Regards,
        Alberto.

__________________
Alberto Bartesaghi
abarte at iie.edu.uy

Instituto de Ingenieria Electrica
Universidad de la Republica
Montevideo, Uruguay