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

Is this a 3D box or a 2D rectangle? Either way you're probably best off getting the point-line (for 2D) or point-plane (3D) distance for each side, then selecting the minimum.

Edit: there's a much better way described here (last post). It involves transforming your point coordinates into box space, then "saturating" the coordinates with the box size to find the point on the box closest to the point. I haven't tried it, but it looks right to me.