calculating distance between a point and a rectangular box (nearest point)

Question

is there a easy formula to calculate this? i\'ve been working on some math but i can only find a way to calculate the distance directed to the center of the box, not direct

Answer 1

This is easy to achieve with dot products. In fact it has been answered in 3d already for the non axis aligned case.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/44824522/158285

But in 2D you can achieve the same

public struct Vector2 {
   double X; double Y

   // Vector dot product
   double Dot(Vector2 other)=>X*other.X+Y*other.Y;


   // Length squared of the vector
   double LengthSquared()=>Dot(this,this);

   // Plus other methods for multiplying by a scalar
   // adding and subtracting vectors etc
}

The function to return the closest point

public Vector2 ClosestPointTo
    (Vector2 q, Vector2 origin, Vector3 v10, Vector3 v01)
{
    var px = v10;
    var py = v01;


    var vx = (px - origin);
    var vy = (py - origin);


    var tx = Vector2.Dot( q - origin, vx ) / vx.LengthSquared();
    var ty = Vector3.Dot( q - origin, vy ) / vy.LengthSquared();


    tx = tx < 0 ? 0 : tx > 1 ? 1 : tx;
    ty = ty < 0 ? 0 : ty > 1 ? 1 : ty;

    var p = tx * vx + ty * vy + origin;

    return p;
}