
Chapter
15
Intersection
Methods
T
he distance methods of Chapter 14 may be used to detect intersections of ob-
jects. Of course, a distance of zero means the objects are intersecting. The dis-
tance functions compute a pair of closest points, but if two objects are overlapping,
the number of intersection points may be infinite. This chapter presents some com-
monly used intersection methods that are not based on distance. The first part is
dedicated to line-object intersections and the last part is dedicated to object-object
intersections. In all cases, objects are treated as solids. A planar component such as a
triangle or rectangle and a spatial component ...