Archive for the ‘Programming’ category


Color Picker Widget for Qt5

Aug 24, 2019

Qt5 support standard dialogs such as QFileDialog, QFontDialog, and QColorDialog, however, it does not provide a color picker to allow a user to pick a color. Recently, I need a color picker for one of my projects and I implemented a simple color picker widget.

SColorPicker is available from Github as a part of QtUtils repository. To use SColorPicker, add the header and cpp files directly in your project. Then, simply add an instance of SColorPicker in a layout. SColorPicker will appear as 16×16 pixels colored square in the layout. If you need a different size, change it in the SColorPicker's constructor. When a user double-clicks on the colored square, the system’s color dialog will appear allowing the user to choose a color. The selected color can be obtained from color() function or by connecting to colorPicked() signal.

Below are the screenshots of the SColorPicker_Demo and system color dialog present to the user on Windows 10 computer.


Fill Disk Partition

Aug 23, 2019

Recently, I had to give away a computer with couple of disks in it. I wanted to securely erase data on these disks as I stored personal sensitive information on them. Using a program such as DBAN was not an option as I was not allowed to remove the operating system from the computer. My goal was to simply overwrite free space from all the partitions. I couldn’t find anything I liked so I ended up writing a simple tool called FillPartition in python.

FillPartition is hosted on Github at https://github.com/saurabhg17/FillPartition. It is really easy to use with just one mandatory argument (the path of the partition) and one optional argument (–outputDir, -od) the directory in the partition where files should be written. FillPartition writes 1GB files filled with 0 bytes until the free space is less than 1GB and then write one final file of the size equal to the remaining free space.

Below is a screenshot of a run of FillPartition on Windows


Search Box using QLineEdit

Jul 30, 2015

This week, at work I had to implement a search box for a software I am working on. The search box is to filter some data dynamically as user types a query. I wanted to show a clear (cross) icon at the right side of the search box so that user can clear the results instead of selecting the current query and deleting it manually. Lastly, for clarity I wanted to show a search icon on the left side of search box. The search box looks like this:

Screenshot of the Search box implemented using QLineEdit

After the user enters a query a clear icon appears on the right. The clear icon is in fact a button and clicking it will clear the current search.
Screenshot of the Search box with keywords implemented using QLineEdit

It is really easy to make this search box using QLineEdit. We need only the following three lines of code:

QLineEdit* _lineEdit = new QLineEdit();
_lineEdit->setClearButtonEnabled(true);
_lineEdit->addAction(":/resources/search.ico", QLineEdit::LeadingPosition);
_lineEdit->setPlaceHolderText("Search...");

// add _lineEdit to your widget

Line 2 enables the clear button which adds the clear action and cross icon to the right. Line 3 adds another action with a search icon to the left of the QLineEdit. We don’t listen to this action as it is merely decorative. Line 4 adds a placeholder text which is shown in the QLineEdit but is cleared as soon as user starts typing.

We only connect textChanged(const QString&)  signal which is emitted both when a user clicks on the cross icon and when he enters a search query.

 




Markdown to PDF Converter

Jul 29, 2015

Few weeks ago, I published SLogLib (a cross-platform logging library) on GitHub. I wrote the user manual in a readme.md file as is the standard practice at GitHub. However, since most of users don’t have markdown viewers installed on their machines they would either need to access GitHub repository or would have to convert it to more popular format such as PDF or perhaps HTML. For many users going online is becoming standard practice to access documentation but I prefer offline manuals. Thus, I wanted to ship a PDF manual along with the code.

I searched high and low for a standalone tool to convert markdown to PDF but surprisingly there are not a lot of options out there. The first tool I came across was GitPrint. It is conceptually innovative and straightforward to use with GitHub. Just add /your_user_name/repository_name at the end of http://gitprint.com and it prints the readme.md in the repository to PDF. The PDF generated is of good quality but there are no styling options. Also, it failed to include images in the PDF so I had to kept looking. One of the frequently recommended tool is PanDoc, which is a swiss-army knife to convert files from one markup format into another. However, in my experience it doesn’t do a good job of converting markdown to PDF. Another popular tool online is a markdown-pdf package for Node.js. Since, I have no prior experience with Node.js I haven’t tried it yet.

Earlier this year, I bought a MacBook Pro and installed a markdown editor called MacDown. It is really nice tool with side-by-side rendering of markup and HTML. It can export markdown as PDF and produces very good quality PDF’s. It also supports lots of styling options as well as a CSS to customize PDF generation. In the end, I used it to generate PDF for SLogLib.

Even though I had a PDF for SLogLib, I wanted to find/build a cross-platform tool to convert markdown to PDF.

The basic idea to convert markdown to PDF is simple. First convert markdown to HTML and then print HTML to PDF. I used hoedown to convert markdown to PDF because of several reasons:

  1. First and foremost it is cross-platform and compiles as a standalone binary for all three main platforms: Windows, Linux, and OSX.
  2. MacDown uses it too and I was quite happy with its rendering.
  3. It supports not only standard markdown but also several non-standard extensions.

To converted HTML to PDF one of the most popular tool I came across was wkhtmltopdf. It is also cross-platform and complies into standalone binaries for all popular platforms. In fact, it is possible to download the pre-built library right from its website. Wkhtmltopdf uses a modified version of webkit shipped with Qt. It uses webkit to render the html and print to PDF. However, while testing I found that on a Windows 7 machines there is a serious problem with font kerning. It has been reported by a lot of users but I haven’t found a solution to fix it. Wkhtmltopdf would have been ideal as I could simply write a command line and/or GUI tool wrapping the functionality of hoedown and Wkhtmltopdf.

Screenshot of markdown to PDF generated from MacDown

Screenshot of PDF generated from MacDown.

Screenshot of markdown to PDF generated wkhtmltopdf

Screenshot of PDF generated from wkhtmltopdf.

I could not find any other standalone cross-platform tool to convert HTML to PDF. So, for now I decided to use dompdf which is written in PHP. Once I started used PHP I thought why not make it a web based tool. This would allow me to learn about SEO which I have been promising myself to learn one day :). The tools is hosted at http://markdown2pdf.com. At the moment it doesn’t appear in first five pages in Google search for “markdown to pdf” or “markdown 2 pdf”. I am playing with various SEO tools and techniques and hope to get it within first five pages.

My quest for a standalone tool is not yet complete. I will try to find a solution for wkhtmltopdf kerning issue or find another standalone cross-platform tool for converting from HTML to PDF. I will update with my findings on this blog.




Cross-platform high-resolution timer

Jul 16, 2015

Often there is a need to estimate the time it takes for a piece of code to run. This is useful not only for debugging but also for reporting the execution time of lengthy tasks to the user.

On Windows, QueryPerformanceFrequency() and QueryPerformanceCounter() can be used to determine the execution time of a code. QueryPerformanceFrequency() returns the frequency of the current performance counter in counts per second and QueryPerformanceCounter() returns a high resolution (<1µs) time stamp. Together they can be used to determine time it takes to run a piece of code is:

LARGE_INTEGER _frequency;
QueryPerformanceFrequency(&_frequency);

LARGE_INTEGER _start;
QueryPerformanceCounter(&_start);

// Code which takes a long time to run.

LARGE_INTEGER _stop;
QueryPerformanceCounter(&_stop);

double _intervalInSeconds = (_stop.QuadPart - _start.QuadPart) / _frequency.QuadPart;

On Linux, clock_gettime can be used to get a time interval with a resolution of nano-seconds. clock_gettime() requires two arguments: clockid_t and timespec structure. To build a timer, CLOCK_MONOTONIC is a good choice for clockid_t as the time is guaranteed to be monotonically increasing. timespec structure have two field: tv_sec (time in seconds) and tv_nsec (time in nanoseconds). Code to determine the time it takes to run a piece of code is:

struct timespec _start;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &_start);

// Code which takes long time to run.

struct timespec _stop;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &_stop);

double _intervalInseconds = (_stop.tv_sec + _stop.tv_nsec*1e-9) - (_start.tv_sec + _start.tv_nsec*1e-9);

I have written a simple class which can be user on both windows and Linux. It has the following interface:

class Timer
{
public:

    enum TimeUnit
    {
        TimeInSeconds = 1,
        TimeInMilliSeconds = 1000,
        TimeInMicroSeconds = 1000000
    };

public:

    Timer();
    ~Timer();

    // On Windows, returns true if high performance timer is available.
    // On Linux, always returns true.
    bool IsTimerAvailable();

    // Start the timer.
    void Start();

    // Stop the timer and return the time elapsed since the timer was started.
    double Stop(TimeUnit timeUnit = TimeInMilliSeconds);

    // Get the time elapsed since Start() was called.
    double TimeElapsedSinceStart(TimeUnit timeUnit = TimeInMilliSeconds);

    // Get the total time elapsed between Start() and Stop().
    double TotalTimeElasped(TimeUnit timeUnit = TimeInMilliSeconds);
};

You can download the code from the following links:
Timer.h
Timer.cpp
Timer_Unix.cpp
Timer.zip


SLogLib: An easy to use, fully customizable and extensible, cross-platform logging library

Jun 14, 2015

A long time ago when I was doing PhD I was implementing a very complex geometric algorithm for computing intersection of two triangular meshes. There were bugs in code which would trigger only in certain edge cases. Since it was a GUI program using std::cout was not an option. Initially I tried writing messages to a file but soon realized it was too tedious as code was spanned across several files and I had to manually insert file names, function names, line numbers for every logging message.

A quick search on Internet revealed many logging libraries. I tried couple of them (unfortunately I can’t remember their names now) but none of them allowed customization of the output. The libraries I came across could output to variety of devices, supported multi-threading and many other fancy features but it was not possible to change the way messages was reported to the user. This was very important to me because I wanted to format my messages in a particular way so that I can easily check how my code was crashing on edge cases.

So, I wrote the first version of SLogLib sometime in 2005. It was build on a single principle that user should be in complete control of how messages are written to devices. In order to do that, SLogLib wraps all information required for logging into a structure called Message and passes it to a Formatter. The Formatter converts the Message structure to a std::string which will be outputted to the device. The Formatter must be written by the user. However, to make it easier to start using SLogLib and illustrate how to write a Formatter few Formatters are included with SLogLib.

Over past decade SLogLib has been very useful to me for a variety of projects and I hope that other can find it useful as well. SLogLib is hosted on Github under MIT license. You can clone of fork it from here: https://github.com/saurabhg17/SLogLib.




Computing area of all facets in CGAL::Polyhedron_3

Oct 9, 2014

In this post I will show how to compute area of a facet in CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

ComputeFacetArea() Functor

ComputeFacetArea() is a thread-safe functor for computing the area of a given facet in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3. The facet must be a planar polygon with arbitrary number of sides. We need facet’s normal vector to compute it’s area. The facet normals must be be initialized using the ComputeFacetArea()’s constructor. The code for computing the facet normals is presented in this post: Computing normal of all facets in CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

#ifndef _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEFACETAREA_H_
#define _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEFACETAREA_H_

#include "PropertyMap.h"

namespace SMeshLib   {
namespace Operations {
;

// The ComputeFacetArea is a functor (delegate) to compute the area of a facet in CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// operator() is thread-safe.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map associating a normal vector for each facet in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
template<class TPolyhedron, class TFacetNormals>
struct ComputeFacetArea
{
public:
	
	// Redefine types from TPolyhedron for convenience.
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Facet                                  Facet;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3                       Vector3;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Halfedge_around_facet_const_circulator HalfEdgeConstCirculator;
	
	// Return type of operator() required by QtConcurrent.
	typedef double result_type;
	
public:
	
	ComputeFacetArea(const TFacetNormals& facetNormals_)
		: facetNormals(facetNormals_)
	{}
	
	// Compute the area of a given facet.
	// The formula for computing facet area, which in general is a planar polygon, is from
	// http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0101/algorithm_0101.htm
	inline double operator() (const Facet& f) const
	{
		std::vector<Vector3> _vectors;
		HalfEdgeConstCirculator s = f.facet_begin();
		HalfEdgeConstCirculator e = s;
		CGAL_For_all(s, e)
		{
			_vectors.push_back(s->vertex()->point() - CGAL::ORIGIN);
		}
		
		Vector3 _sumCrossProducts(CGAL::NULL_VECTOR);
		const size_t N = _vectors.size();
		for(size_t i=0 ; i<N ; ++i)
		{
			_sumCrossProducts = _sumCrossProducts + CGAL::cross_product(_vectors[i], _vectors[(i+1)%N]);
		}
		
		return fabs((facetNormals.value(&f) * _sumCrossProducts) / 2.0);
	}
	
public:
	
	// Facet normals are required for computing the area of a facet.
	const TFacetNormals& facetNormals;
};

};	// End namespace Operations.
};	// End namespace SMeshLib.

#endif // _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEFACETAREA_H_
Using ComputeFacetArea() Functor

Area of a facet f can be computed as double area = ComputeFacetArea(h);.

For most purposes, it is better to compute area of all facets once and cache them for later use. It is best to store the results in an associative container which associates the facet handle with the area. In the following example, I use PropertyMap which is a wrapper for std::set.

#include "ImportOBJ.h"
#include "ComputeFacetArea.h"
#include "ComputeFacetNormal.h"
#include "PropertyMap.h"
#include "CGAL/Simple_cartesian.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_items_3.h"
#include "CGAL/HalfedgeDS_list.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_3.h"

typedef CGAL::Simple_cartesian<double> Kernel;
typedef CGAL::Polyhedron_3<Kernel, 
	                       CGAL::Polyhedron_items_3, 
						   CGAL::HalfedgeDS_list> CgalPolyhedron;

// Compute the area of all facets in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3 and stores it in 
// facetAreas.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhedron_3.
// TFacetAreas is a property map which associates the facet area to facet in 
// the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to facet in 
// the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
template<class TPolyhedron, class TFacetAreas, class TFacetNormals>
void computeFacetAreas(const TPolyhedron& polyhedron, TFacetAreas* facetAreas, const TFacetNormals& facetNormals)
{
	if(facetAreas == 0)
	{
		return;
	}
	
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _begin = polyhedron.facets_begin();
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _end   = polyhedron.facets_end();
	
	SMeshLib::Operations::ComputeFacetArea<TPolyhedron, TFacetNormals> _computeFacetArea(facetNormals);
	CGAL_For_all(_begin, _end)
	{
		facetAreas->setValue(&*_begin, _computeFacetArea(*_begin));
	}
}

// Compute the normal of all facets in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3 and stores it in facetNormals.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhedron_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to facet in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3. 
template<class TPolyhedron, class TFacetNormals>
void computeFacetNormals(const TPolyhedron& polyhedron, TFacetNormals* facetNormals)
{
	if(facetNormals == 0)
	{
		return;
	}
	
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _begin = polyhedron.facets_begin();
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _end   = polyhedron.facets_end();

	SMeshLib::Operations::ComputeFacetNormal<TPolyhedron> _computeFacetNormal;
	CGAL_For_all(_begin, _end)
	{
		facetNormals->setValue(&*_begin, _computeFacetNormal(*_begin));
	}
}

void testComputeFacetArea()
{
	CgalPolyhedron _poly;
	SMeshLib::IO::importOBJ("Venus.obj", &_poly);
	
	typedef SMeshLib::PropertyMap<const CgalPolyhedron::Facet*, CgalPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3> FacetNormalPM;
	FacetNormalPM _facetNormals;
	computeFacetNormals(_poly, &_facetNormals);
	
	typedef SMeshLib::PropertyMap<const CgalPolyhedron::Facet*, double> FacetAreaPM;
	FacetAreaPM _facetAreas;
	computeFacetAreas(_poly, &_facetAreas, _facetNormals);
}
Downloads

ImportOBJ.h
PropertyMap.h
ComputeFacetNormal.h
ComputeFacetArea.h
TestComputeFacetArea.cpp
Venus.obj
ComputeFacetArea.zip


Computing normal of all vertices in CGAL::Polyhedron_3

Oct 9, 2014

In this post I will show how to compute normal vector at a vector in CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

ComputeVertexNormal() Functor

ComputeVertexNormal() is a thread-safe functor for computing the normal vector at a given vertex in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3. The normal vector at a vertex is the average of the normal vectors of all facets incident on the vertex. The facet normals must be be initialized using the ComputeVertexNormal()’s constructor. The code for computing the facet normals is presented in this post: Computing normal of all facets in CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

#ifndef _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEVERTEXNORMAL_H_
#define _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEVERTEXNORMAL_H_

#include "PropertyMap.h"

namespace SMeshLib   {
namespace Operations {
;

// The ComputeVertexNormal is a functor (delegate) to compute the normal of a vertex in CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// operator() is thread-safe.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to each facet in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// The vertex normal is the average of all facet normals incident on it.
template<class TPolyhedron, class TFacetNormals>
struct ComputeVertexNormal
{
public:
	
	// Redefine types from TPoly for convenience.
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Vertex                                  Vertex;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Facet                                   Facet;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3                        Vector3;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Halfedge_around_vertex_const_circulator HalfEdgeConstCirculator;
	
	// Return type of operator() required by QtConcurrent.
	typedef Vector3 result_type;
	
public:
	
	ComputeVertexNormal(const TFacetNormals& facetNormals_)
		: facetNormals(facetNormals_)
	{}
	
	// Compute normal of the given vertex.
	inline Vector3 operator() (const Vertex& v) const
	{
		Vector3                 n = CGAL::NULL_VECTOR;
		HalfEdgeConstCirculator s = v.vertex_begin();
		HalfEdgeConstCirculator e = s;
		CGAL_For_all(s, e)
		{
			// Border edge doesn't have facet and hence no normal.
			if(!s->is_border())
			{
				n = n + facetNormals.value(&*(s->facet()));
			}
		}
		return n/std::sqrt(n*n);
	}
	
public:
	
	const TFacetNormals& facetNormals;
};

};	// End namespace Operations.
};	// End namespace SMeshLib.

#endif // _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEVERTEXNORMAL_H_
Using ComputeVertexNormal() Functor

Normal vector at a vertex v can be computed as Vector3 normal = ComputeVertexNormal(f); .

For most purposes, it is better to compute area of all facets once and cache them for later use. It is best to store the results in an associative container which associates the facet handle with the area. In the following example, I use PropertyMap which is a wrapper for std::set.

#include "ImportOBJ.h"
#include "ComputeFacetNormal.h"
#include "ComputeVertexNormal.h"
#include "PropertyMap.h"
#include "CGAL/Simple_cartesian.h"
#include <CGAL/Polyhedron_items_3.h>
#include "CGAL/HalfedgeDS_list.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_3.h"

typedef CGAL::Simple_cartesian<double> Kernel;
typedef CGAL::Polyhedron_3<Kernel, 
	                       CGAL::Polyhedron_items_3, 
						   CGAL::HalfedgeDS_list> CgalPolyhedron;

// Compute the normal of all vertices in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3 and stores it in 
// vertexNormals.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhedron_3.
// TVertexNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to vertex 
// in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to facet 
// in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
template<class TPolyhedron, class TVertexNormals, class TFacetNormals>
void computeVertexNormals(const TPolyhedron& polyhedron, TVertexNormals* vertexNormals, const TFacetNormals& facetNormals)
{
	if(vertexNormals == 0)
	{
		return;
	}
	
	typename TPolyhedron::Vertex_const_iterator _begin = polyhedron.vertices_begin();
	typename TPolyhedron::Vertex_const_iterator _end   = polyhedron.vertices_end();
	
	SMeshLib::Operations::ComputeVertexNormal<TPolyhedron, TFacetNormals> _computeVertexNormal(facetNormals);
	CGAL_For_all(_begin, _end)
	{
		vertexNormals->setValue(&*_begin, _computeVertexNormal(*_begin));
	}
}

// Compute the normal of all facets in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3 and stores it in facetNormals.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhedron_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to facet in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3. 
template<class TPolyhedron, class TFacetNormals>
void computeFacetNormals(const TPolyhedron& polyhedron, TFacetNormals* facetNormals)
{
	if(facetNormals == 0)
	{
		return;
	}
	
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _begin = polyhedron.facets_begin();
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _end   = polyhedron.facets_end();

	SMeshLib::Operations::ComputeFacetNormal<TPolyhedron> _computeFacetNormal;
	CGAL_For_all(_begin, _end)
	{
		facetNormals->setValue(&*_begin, _computeFacetNormal(*_begin));
	}
}

void testComputeVertexNormal()
{
	CgalPolyhedron _poly;
	SMeshLib::IO::importOBJ("Venus.obj", &_poly);
	
	typedef SMeshLib::PropertyMap<const CgalPolyhedron::Facet*, CgalPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3> FacetNormalPM;
	FacetNormalPM _facetNormals;
	computeFacetNormals(_poly, &_facetNormals);
	
	typedef SMeshLib::PropertyMap<const CgalPolyhedron::Vertex*, CgalPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3> VertexNormalPM;
	VertexNormalPM _vertexNormals;
	computeVertexNormals(_poly, &_vertexNormals, _facetNormals);
}
Downloads

ImportOBJ.h
PropertyMap.h
ComputeFacetNormal.h
ComputeVertexNormal.h
TestComputeVertexNormal.cpp
Venus.obj
ComputeVertexNormal.zip


Computing normal of all facets in CGAL::Polyhedron_3

Oct 8, 2014

In this post I will show how to compute normal vector of a facet in CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

ComputeFacetNormal() Functor

ComputeFacetNormal() is a thread-safe functor for computing the normal vector of a given facet in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3. The facet must be a planar polygon with arbitrary number of sides.

#ifndef _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEFACETNORMAL_H_
#define _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEFACETNORMAL_H_

namespace SMeshLib   {
namespace Operations {
;

// The ComputeFacetNormal is a functor (delegate) to compute the normal of a facet in CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// ComputeFacetNormal is thread-safe.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
template<class TPolyhedron>
struct ComputeFacetNormal
{
public:
	
	// Redefine types from TPolyhedron for convenience.
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Facet                 Facet;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Halfedge_const_handle HalfedgeConstHandle;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Traits::Point_3       Point3;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3      Vector3;
	
	// Return type of operator() required by QtConcurrent.
	typedef Vector3 result_type;
	
public:
	
	// Compute normal of the given facet.
	// Facet can be triangle, quadrilateral or a polygon as long as its planar.
	// Use first three vertices to compute the normal.
	inline Vector3 operator() (const Facet& f) const
	{
		HalfedgeConstHandle h  = f.halfedge();
		Point3              p1 = h->vertex()->point();
		Point3              p2 = h->next()->vertex()->point();
		Point3              p3 = h->next()->next()->vertex()->point();
		Vector3             n  = CGAL::cross_product(p2-p1, p3-p1);
		return n / std::sqrt(n*n);
	}
};

};	// End namespace Operations.
};	// End namespace SMeshLib.

#endif // _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEFACETNORMAL_H_
Using ComputeFacetNormal() Functor

Normal vector of a facet f can be computed as Vector3 normal = ComputeFacetNormal(f);.

For most purposes, it is better to compute area of all facets once and cache them for later use. It is best to store the results in an associative container which associates the facet handle with the area. In the following example, I use PropertyMap which is a wrapper for std::set.

#include "ImportOBJ.h"
#include "ComputeFacetNormal.h"
#include "PropertyMap.h"
#include "CGAL/Simple_cartesian.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_items_3.h"
#include "CGAL/HalfedgeDS_list.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_3.h"

typedef CGAL::Simple_cartesian<double> Kernel;
typedef CGAL::Polyhedron_3<Kernel, 
	                   CGAL::Polyhedron_items_3, 
			   CGAL::HalfedgeDS_list> CgalPolyhedron;

// Compute the normal of all facets in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3 and stores it in 
// facetNormals.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhedron_3.
// TFacetNormals is a property map which associates a normal vector to facet in 
// the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3. 
template<class TPolyhedron, class TFacetNormals>
void computeFacetNormals(const TPolyhedron& polyhedron, TFacetNormals* facetNormals)
{
	if(facetNormals == 0)
	{
		return;
	}
	
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _begin = polyhedron.facets_begin();
	typename TPolyhedron::Facet_const_iterator _end   = polyhedron.facets_end();

	SMeshLib::Operations::ComputeFacetNormal<TPolyhedron> _computeFacetNormal;
	CGAL_For_all(_begin, _end)
	{
		facetNormals->setValue(&*_begin, _computeFacetNormal(*_begin));
	}
}

void testComputeFacetNormal()
{
	CgalPolyhedron _poly;
	SMeshLib::IO::importOBJ("Venus.obj", &_poly);
	
	typedef SMeshLib::PropertyMap<const CgalPolyhedron::Facet*, CgalPolyhedron::Traits::Vector_3> FacetNormalPM;
	FacetNormalPM _facetNormals;
	computeFacetNormals(_poly, &_facetNormals);
}
Downloads

ImportOBJ.h
PropertyMap.h
ComputeFacetNormal.h
TestComputeFacetNormal.cpp
Venus.obj
ComputeFacetNormal.zip


Computing edge length of all half-edges in CGAL::Polyhedron_3

Oct 8, 2014

In this post I will show how to compute edge length for a half-edge in CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

ComputeEdgeLength() Functor

ComputeEdgeLength() is a thread-safe functor for computing the edge length of a given half-edge in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3.

#ifndef _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEEDGELENGTH_H_
#define _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEEDGELENGTH_H_

namespace SMeshLib   {
namespace Operations {
;

// The ComputeEdgeLength is a functor (delegate) to compute the length of a halfedge in CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
// ComputeEdgeLength is thread-safe.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
template<class TPolyhedron>
struct ComputeEdgeLength
{
public:
	
	// Redefine types from TPolyhedron for convenience.
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Point_3  Point3;
	typedef typename TPolyhedron::Halfedge Halfedge;
	
	// Return type of operator() required by QtConcurrent.
	typedef double result_type;
	
public:
	
	// Compute edge length of a given half edge.
	inline double operator () (const Halfedge& h)
	{
		const Point3& p = h.prev()->vertex()->point();
		const Point3& q = h.vertex()->point();
		return CGAL::sqrt(CGAL::squared_distance(p, q));
	}
};

};	// End namespace Operations.
};	// End namespace SMeshLib.

#endif // _SMESHLIB_OPERATIONS_COMPUTEEDGELENGTH_H_
Using ComputeEdgeLength() Functor

Edge length of a half-edge h can be computed as double length = ComputeEdgeLength(h);.

For most purposes, it is better to compute length of all half-edges once and cache them for later use. It is best to store the results in an associative container which associates the half-edge handle with the edge length. In the following example, I use PropertyMap which is a wrapper for std::set.

#include "ImportOBJ.h"
#include "ComputeEdgeLength.h"
#include "PropertyMap.h"
#include "CGAL/Simple_cartesian.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_items_3.h"
#include "CGAL/HalfedgeDS_list.h"
#include "CGAL/Polyhedron_3.h"

typedef CGAL::Simple_cartesian<double> Kernel;
typedef CGAL::Polyhedron_3<Kernel, 
	                   CGAL::Polyhedron_items_3, 
			   CGAL::HalfedgeDS_list> CgalPolyhedron;

// Compute the length of all half-edges in a CGAL::Polyhedron_3 and stores it 
// in edgeLengths.
// TPolyhedron is a type of CGAL::Polyhedron_3.
// TEdgeLengths is a property map which associates the edge length to half-edge 
// in the CGAL::Polyhdeon_3.
template<class TPolyhedron, class TEdgeLengths>
void computeEdgeLengths(const TPolyhedron& polyhedron, TEdgeLengths* edgeLengths)
{
	if(edgeLengths == 0)
	{
		return;
	}
	
	typename TPolyhedron::Halfedge_const_iterator _begin = polyhedron.halfedges_begin();
	typename TPolyhedron::Halfedge_const_iterator _end   = polyhedron.halfedges_end();

	SMeshLib::Operations::ComputeEdgeLength<TPolyhedron> _computeEdgeLength;
	CGAL_For_all(_begin, _end)
	{
		edgeLengths->setValue(&*_begin, _computeEdgeLength(*_begin));
	}
}

void testComputeEdgeLength()
{
	CgalPolyhedron _poly;
	SMeshLib::IO::importOBJ("Venus.obj", &_poly);
	
	typedef SMeshLib::PropertyMap<const CgalPolyhedron::Halfedge*, double> EdgeLengthPM;
	EdgeLengthPM _edgeLengths;
	computeEdgeLengths(_poly, &_edgeLengths);
}
Downloads

ImportOBJ.h
PropertyMap.h
ComputeEdgeLength.h
TestComputeEdgeLength.cpp
Venus.obj
ImportOBJ.zip