[gdal-dev] Area of hourglass shaped polygon

[Ramiro Gonzalez]

I won't calculate the area. I'll show an 'invalid area' message to the user.


Thanks.

2010/3/19 Peter J Halls <P.Halls at york.ac.uk>

> Whilst I agree with Chris that the 'winding' method for calculating polygon
> areas would need tweaking to work with a shape like this, the 'complementary
> areas' method or the triangulation method would.  See Stephen Wise, GIS
> Basics, London: Taylor & Francis (2002) pp61-64 or Joseph O'Rourke,
> Computational Geometry in C, Cambridge (2nd Edn): Cambridge University Press
> (1998) pp18-22.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Peter
>
>
> Chris 'Xenon' Hanson wrote:
>
>> On 3/18/2010 10:20 AM, Ramiro Gonzalez wrote:
>>
>>> I use gdal to calculate the area of polygons drawn by a user over a map.
>>> The points are added to the polygon in same order the user selects them.
>>> An hourglass shaped polygon can be created adding 4 points like a 'z'.
>>> When the polygon has the shape of an hourglass, the measure returned by
>>> get_Area() is smaller than the sum of the areas of the two independent
>>> triangles.
>>> I'd like to know if there is a way to calculate the area in this
>>> situation?
>>> I tried to intersect the polygon with another that contains it but the
>>> operation fails when the polygon cross itself(return NULL). I could use
>>> this to inform that the area calculated is invalid, but I'd like to know
>>> if there is a better way of knowing this.
>>>
>>
>>  I'm pretty sure this would be considered nonsensical topology. Area
>> calculations usually
>> rely on the points in a polygon winding either consistently clockwise or
>> counter-clockwise, but yours are mixed.
>>
>>  Don't do that. It's bad.
>>
>>  If you want to measure the area of a shape like that, create it out of
>> two normal
>> consistently-wound triangles stacked tip-to-tip.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>> Ramiro
>>>
>>
>>
> --
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Peter J Halls, GIS Advisor, University of York
> Telephone: 01904 433806     Fax: 01904 433740
> Snail mail: Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York YO10
> 5DD
> This message has the status of a private and personal communication
>
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