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How to check if a path fits inside of another path?

Engaged ,
Jul 28, 2014 Jul 28, 2014

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I've just been told that I need a script that will check and see if a path fits entirely within another path? In my case, I need to see if a GroupItem fits within a circle of a specific size. I don't see any methods available for PageItem that will do it for me, so does anyone know of a workaround? (Preferably without having to check every single PathPoint of every single item in the group.) I am using Illustrator CS6 and do my scripting with Javascript.

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Valorous Hero , Sep 05, 2014 Sep 05, 2014

This is good mind-exercise.
What I've come up with below will let you know whether your single path's entire set of anchor points is located wholly within a closed bezier path.

 

What you need to do to start working on it is make a document, make your containing ellipse and call it "mycir" and test out a path called "mypth".  The script gets a bezier interpolated point-polygon from the ellipse and uses the raycasting to check anchors of a test path to see if all are inside.  Of course you may alr

...

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2014 Jul 28, 2014

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This script can do it for rectangles:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3699427#3699427

Maybe you can learn from it?

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Engaged ,
Jul 29, 2014 Jul 29, 2014

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I'm afraid I do not see anything in there which can help with ellipses/circles. It uses the visibleBounds property of paths, which only gives you a top, bottom, left, and right. It's entirely possible for an object's visibleBounds to be within an ellipse's bounds, but still have parts of it sticking outside of the ellipse. Thus, Carlos' method will not work in my case, sorry.

I will say that, while looking at the DOM for Illustrator CS6, I noticed that there is an "inscribed" property (boolean, default true) that one can set when creating an ellipse through scripting. Any idea what that property actually means/does?

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Engaged ,
Sep 04, 2014 Sep 04, 2014

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So, the "inscribed" property only sets how an ellipse is drawn. When you draw an ellipse in Illustrator, you drag your mouse from one corner to an opposite corner. This imaginary rectangle that you draw sets the boundary for the ellipse. By default, the ellipse is "inscribed" inside of that rectangle. The same thing happens with scripting. If you try to draw an ellipse with a script and set its "inscribed" property to false, then the ellipse will not be inside the rectangle, but outside of it; it will be essentially "circumscribed."

However, I'm afraid none of this helps with trying to discover whether or not one path fits wholly inside of an ellipse. Any ideas?

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Community Expert ,
Sep 04, 2014 Sep 04, 2014

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You will probably have to compare arrays of pathPoints but it's likely to be wonky.

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Valorous Hero ,
Sep 04, 2014 Sep 04, 2014

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Point in polygon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You need a programming mathematician's help for that one-
It looks like it would be possible to get an approximate polygon of your ellipse (or any closed & whole bezier) and then check each single one of your path points in the groupItem's paths against it using the principles in the Wiki link above.  I think to get the approximate polygon you'd make a function to put bezier points along the ellipse and choose only a few of them for the polygon.

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Engaged ,
Sep 04, 2014 Sep 04, 2014

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I like the idea of using a Raycasting algorithm, as described in your link. It would work just perfectly for the ellipse/circle of which I speak. Now, the question is how to put said racasting algorithm into an ExtendScript script for Illustrator CS6?

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Valorous Hero ,
Sep 05, 2014 Sep 05, 2014

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This is good mind-exercise.
What I've come up with below will let you know whether your single path's entire set of anchor points is located wholly within a closed bezier path.

 

What you need to do to start working on it is make a document, make your containing ellipse and call it "mycir" and test out a path called "mypth".  The script gets a bezier interpolated point-polygon from the ellipse and uses the raycasting to check anchors of a test path to see if all are inside.  Of course you may already see the problem of parts of your curve which are not anchors overlapping the ellipse and not being detected.  If that's such a big problem, you will need to change the process to create the bezier polygon of your test path and check that with the raycasting.  And that's just for one path- to do an entire group, yes, you'll need to adapt it to work on a whole group of paths.  One more thing- this is really based on points.. so if your group has.. some effects, or appearance which really goes outside the boundaries, you'll definitely need to find a way to expand those to find your true boundaries, and raster effects may be a real deal-breaker.

#target illustrator

function test () {
	if (!Array.prototype.indexOf) {
		Array.prototype.indexOf = function(searchElement, fromIndex) {
			var k;
			if (this == null) {
				throw new TypeError('"this" is null or not defined');
			}
			var o = Object(this);
			var len = o.length >>> 0;
			if (len === 0) {
				return -1;
			}
			var n = +fromIndex || 0;
			if (Math.abs(n) === Infinity) {
				n = 0;
			}
			if (n >= len) {
				return -1;
			}
			k = Math.max(n >= 0 ? n : len - Math.abs(n), 0);
			while (k < len) {
				if (k in o && o[k] === searchElement) {
					return k;
				}
				k++;
			}
			return -1;
		};
	};

	function foreach (arr, func) {
		for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
			func(arr[i]);
		}
	}

	function marker (xy, container) {
		var container = container || doc;
		var z = container.pathItems.ellipse(xy[1] + 2, xy[0] - 2, 4, 4);
		z.stroked = false;
		z.filled = true;
		z.fillColor = clr;
	}

	function getPathPoints (path) { // collects pathPoints of a path into segment arrays of 2 anchors & 2 controls between them
		var arr = [];
		for (var i = 0, ln = path.pathPoints.length; i < ln; i++) { // designed to work on closed paths!
			if (i < ln - 1) {
				var p = path.pathPoints[i], pnext = path.pathPoints[i + 1];
			} else {
				var p = path.pathPoints[i], pnext = path.pathPoints[0];
			}
			arr.push([p.anchor, p.rightDirection, pnext.leftDirection, pnext.anchor]); 
		}
		return arr;
	}

	function getBezierSegment (segArr) { // turns a pathPoint segment  (gotten with getPathPoints) into bezier interpolated points
		var anch2 = segArr[3], cont2 = segArr[2], cont1 = segArr[1], anch1 = segArr[0];
		var resultPts = [];
		var a = anch2[0] - 3 * (cont2[0]) + 3 * (cont1[0]) - anch1[0];
		var b = 3 * (cont2[0]) - 6 * (cont1[0]) + 3 * anch1[0];
		var c = 3 * (cont1[0]) - 3 * (anch1[0]);
		var d = anch1[0];
		var e = anch2[1] - 3 * (cont2[1]) + 3 * (cont1[1]) - anch1[1];
		var f = 3 * (cont2[1]) - 6 * (cont1[1]) + 3 * anch1[1];
		var g = 3 * (cont1[1]) - 3 * (anch1[1]);
		var h = anch1[1];
		var inc = 0.1;
		for (var t = 0; t < 1; t += inc) {
			resultPts.push([
				a * Math.pow(t, 3) + b * Math.pow(t, 2) + (c * t) + d,
				e * Math.pow(t, 3) + f * Math.pow(t, 2) + (g * t) + h
			]);
		}
		return resultPts;
	}

	function getBezierPath (pathPts) { // turns entire series of segments (gotten with getPathPoints)  into a complete set of interpolated bezier points
		var pathArr = [];
		for (var i = 0; i < pathPts.length; i++) {
			var thisPtSet = pathPts[i];
			var seg = getBezierSegment(thisPtSet);
			if (
				i > 0 && (seg[0][0] == pathArr[pathArr.length - 1][0] &&
				seg[0][1] == pathArr[pathArr.length - 1][1])
			) {
				seg.splice(0, 1);
			}
			pathArr = pathArr.concat(seg);
		}
		return pathArr;
	}

	function markBezierPoints (seg) {
		var grp = doc.groupItems.add();
		grp.name = "MyGroup";
		for (var i = 0; i < seg.length; i++) {
			marker(seg, grp);
		}
	}

	function makePolygon (pts) {
		var pth = doc.pathItems.add();
		pth.setEntirePath(pts);
		pth.filled = false;
		pth.stroked = true;
		pth.strokeColor = clr;
		pth.strokeWidth = 1;
	}

	var RayCaster = { // the whole raycasting through polygon algorithm from http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Ray-casting_algorithm
		// evaluates a single point to see if it's inside a polygon.
		Point : function (x, y) {
			this.x = x;
			this.y = y;
		},
		pointInPoly : function (point, poly) {
			var index, intersected, pointA, pointB, segment, segments;
			segments = (function () {
				var _i, _len, _results;
				_results = [];
				for (index = 0, _len = poly.length; index < _len; index++) {
					pointA = poly[index];
					pointB = poly[(index + 1) % poly.length];
					_results.push([new RayCaster.Point(pointA[0], pointA[1]), new RayCaster.Point(pointB[0], pointB[1])]);
				}
				return _results;
			})();
			intersected = (function () {
				var _i, _len, _results;
				_results = [];
				for (_i = 0, _len = segments.length; _i < _len; _i++) {
					segment = segments[_i];
					if (
						RayCaster.rayIntersectsSegment(new RayCaster.Point(point[0], point[1]), segment)
					) {
						_results.push(segment);
					}
				}
				return _results;
			})();
			return intersected.length % 2 !== 0;
		},
		rayIntersectsSegment : function (p, segment) {
			var a, b, mAB, mAP, p1, p2, _ref;
			p1 = segment[0], p2 = segment[1];
			_ref = p1.y < p2.y ? [p1, p2] : [p2, p1], a = _ref[0], b = _ref[1];
			if (p.y === b.y || p.y === a.y) {
				p.y += Number.MIN_VALUE;
			}
			if (p.y > b.y || p.y < a.y) {
				return false;
			} else if (p.x > a.x && p.x > b.x) {
				return false;
			} else if (p.x < a.x && p.x < b.x) {
				return true;
			} else {
				mAB = (b.y - a.y) / (b.x - a.x);
				mAP = (p.y - a.y) / (p.x - a.x);
				return mAP > mAB;
			}
		}
	};

	function pathAnchorsInPoly (myPath, polyPts) {
		var flag = false;
		var all = [];
		foreach(myPath.pathPoints, function (arg) {
			if (RayCaster.pointInPoly(arg.anchor, polyPts) === false) {
				all.push(false);
			}
			all.push(true);
		});
		flag = (all.indexOf(false) != -1) ? false : true;
		if (flag === false) {
			alert("NOT All Path Anchors are inside containing ellipse.");
		} else {
			alert("Yay!  All Path Anchors are INSIDE the containing ellipse!");
		}
		return flag; // for use later (?)
	}

	if (app == "[Application Adobe Illustrator]" && app.documents.length > 0) {
		app.coordinateSystem = CoordinateSystem.ARTBOARDCOORDINATESYSTEM;
		var clr = new CMYKColor();
		clr.cyan = 0;
		clr.magenta = 100;
		clr.yellow = 100;
		clr.black = 0;
		var doc = app.activeDocument;
		try {
			var m = doc.pathItems.getByName('mycir'); // my circle
			var mp = doc.pathItems.getByName('mypth'); // my test path
		} catch (e) {
			alert("Put 2 paths into a document: a containing ellipse, name it 'mycir', and some random path- name it 'mypth'.  Then run.");
			return;
		}
		var pts = getPathPoints(m);
		var bezPts = getBezierPath(pts);

		// testing functions:
		// markBezierPoints(bezPts);
		// makePolygon(bezPts);
		// foreach(bezPts, function(arg) {$.writeln(arg)});

		pathAnchorsInPoly(mp, bezPts);
	}
}

test();

 

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Engaged ,
Sep 05, 2014 Sep 05, 2014

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Wow! Okay, I'm going to need some time to see if I can grok all of that code. You're using some syntax that I've never seen before, as well as object types that I didn't even know were possible in Illustrator (such as a bezier polygon being different from a normal path). It's clear you've got way more knowledge and skills in Illustrator scripting than I, Silly-V. I'll try out your code after I've had some time to try and understand it better, then I'll let you know if it handles our problem well. Thanks!

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Valorous Hero ,
Sep 05, 2014 Sep 05, 2014

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Oh you have questions, feel free to ask 'em here!
First, the "bezier polygon" which I construct from path points using the Bezier equation is just an array of interpolated points..  see those commented-out lines toward the bottom, uncomment them to see what it being drawn. 

  1. //markBezierPoints(bezPts); 
  2. //makePolygon(bezPts);

It's not an object type, but rather just a set of points derived from the ellipse.  Each set of 2 of those points is then fed into a function which checks to see if a ray from a point you want to check intersects them. If it intersects them an even number, it means your point is outside the shape.

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Engaged ,
Nov 19, 2014 Nov 19, 2014

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Sorry for the very late response—things got really crazy busy around here and I had to put all scripting/programming on hold for a while. Okay, so I've finally had some time to examine your code more closely, Silly-V, and it now is beginning to make sense to me. The way the raycasting algorithm is implemented in the RayCaster object are beyond me, but at least most of the rest of your code is now understandable. I can see that converting all of the paths in the artwork to bezier paths and checking to see if each set of points is within the imprint area circle will slow down the script considerably, especially with heavily-detailed artwork. Thus, I won't take it to that extreme. It will be very rare that we'll run into such situations where curves, raster images, and effects will fall outside of the imprint circle. When it happens, we'll just deal with it manually; I don't think it'll be a problem.

So I'll go ahead and mark your answer as the correct one and, with your permission, implement your code into our script here at work, giving you credit for it, of course. Thank you so much for finding a solution to a problem that's been plaguing me for months, and for being incredibly helpful, Silly-V!

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Valorous Hero ,
Nov 19, 2014 Nov 19, 2014

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I hope it works out for you.  The raycasting is also beyond me, that is why it's wholly copied from rosettacode.org 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 20, 2014 Nov 20, 2014

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what if we have two paths, select them both and do a Path Finder Unite operation?

...if we end up with a group, the test path is outside of the Container path (the Ellipse)

...if we end up with the exact same path as the Ellipse, the test path was fully contained inside of it

...if we end up with a path "different" than the starting Ellipse, then the test path was partially outside

no math required.

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Engaged ,
Nov 20, 2014 Nov 20, 2014

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That's… actually a pretty fantastic idea, CarlosCanto. The only hiccup I might see is if one of the paths is a clipping mask: If the masked paths fall outside of the imprint area (the starting circle), then it seems that your third condition gets triggered and the response would be that the art does not fit within the imprint area, even if the clipping mask path does. Otherwise, it's an excellent suggestion and I may consider it as a fallback position if Silly-V's snippet ends up slowing down the overall script too much. Thanks!

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Community Expert ,
Nov 20, 2014 Nov 20, 2014

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Good point, for clipping masks you could test the clipping path only

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Explorer ,
Sep 24, 2022 Sep 24, 2022

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Late to the party but this is a fantastic idea. I'm implementing it now and I'll drop it below when ready!

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Community Expert ,
Nov 10, 2021 Nov 10, 2021

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Hi @Silly-V, this is awesome! Thanks for making it. 🙂

- Mark

 

P.S. there was a very minor typo in markBezier points function: should be marker(seg[i], grp); I think.

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