total area of intersecting rectangles

Question

I need an algorithm to solve this problem: Given 2 rectangles intersecting or overlapping together in any corner, how do I determine the total area for the two rectangles wi

Answer 1

I saw this question wasn't answered so I wrote a small java program to try the equation out that @VicJordan and @NikitaRybak has talked about in previous answers. Hope this helps.

/**
 * This function tries to see how much of the smallest rectangle intersects 
 * the with the larger one. In this case we call the rectangles a and b and we 
 * give them both two points x1,y1 and x2, y2.
 * 
 * First we check for the rightmost left coordinate. Then the leftmost right 
 * coordinate and so on. When we have iLeft,iRight,iTop,iBottom we try to get the 
 * intersection points lenght's right - left and bottom - top.
 * These lenght's we multiply to get the intersection area.
 *
 * Lastly we return the result of what we get when we add the two areas 
 * and remove the intersection area.
 * 
 * @param xa1       left x coordinate   A
 * @param ya1       top y coordinate    A
 * @param xa2       right x coordinate  A
 * @param ya2       bottom y coordinate A
 * @param xb1       left x coordinate   B
 * @param yb1       top y coordinate    B
 * @param xb2       right x coordinate  B
 * @param yb2       bottom y coordinate B
 * @return          Total area without the extra intersection area.
 */

public static float mostlyIntersects(float xa1, float ya1, float xa2, float ya2, float xb1, float yb1, float xb2, float yb2) {
    float iLeft = Math.max(xa1, xb1);
    float iRight = Math.min(xa2, xb2);
    float iTop = Math.max(ya1, yb1);
    float iBottom = Math.min(ya2, yb2);

    float si = Math.max(0, iRight - iLeft) * Math.max(0, iBottom - iTop);
    float sa = (xa2 - xa1) * (ya2 - ya1);
    float sb = (xb2 - xb1) * (yb2 - yb1);

    return sa + sb - si;
}