is there any tool or utility for max that computes the area of a shape, and volume of a 3d object?
found none on google… maybe i missed it (hopefully)
thanks!
In addition to the Measure Utility which has been shipping with Max for all these years, you can also find a Volume and Center Of Mass calculation function in the MAXScript Help that produces the same result. For Area, the Measure utility sums the areas of all triangles, so you can write your own scripted function doing the same if you need one, but it would be a lot slower than the Measure Utility.
Under the Utilities panel select “Measure” should give you all that info
thanks for the tip… dunno how i missed that …
@bobo:
is area computation via triangulation of polygon faster than computing the area of a polygon using numerical integration ?
i.e area of polygon = for i = 1 to n (point[i].x – point[i-1].x)*((point[i].y+point[i-1].y)/2) ; n = number of points in the polygon
Wow, you would only use numerical integration to compute areas of very irregular shapes. You can compute the area of a triangle simply by computing half of the length of the cross product between any two of its edges. And even if the shape is irregular, like a complex implicit shape, you can triangulate it, building an approximation of that shape and then sum the areas of all triangles.