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enter image description here

I have created this set of spheres in Mathematica.

The code I used to produced this is as follows:

satnum=Input["Select Number of Satellites"]
alt=Input["Select an orbit altitude (km)"]
sensorstr=Input["Select sensor strength (km)"]
Graphics3D[{Opacity[1],Sphere[{0,0,0},6371]}]
spacing=2pi/(satnum)
angles=-Range[-pi,pi-.000000001,spacing]
radius=ConstantArray[6371+alt,satnum]
centroids=Transpose[{radius,angles}]
cartcentroids=FromPolarCoordinates[centroids]
zdim=ConstantArray[0,satnum]
cartcentroids=Transpose[{cartcentroids,zdim}]
cartcentroids=Flatten[cartcentroids]
cartcentroids=Partition[cartcentroids,3]
Graphics3D[{Sphere[cartcentroids,sensorstr],Opacity[.2],Sphere[{0,0,0},7571]}]

Basically I want to draw a circle of a given radius r around the transparent sphere in the middle and count how many solid spheres contain a point at a given angle (once a starting point is defined). In this case the # of containing spheres would always be 1 or 2 as long as the circle has a small enough radius. I've looked into functions such as RegionIntersection or Surface Intersection, but I can't seem to figure out exactly how I should approach this problem.

Thanks for any help.

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  • $\begingroup$ If you can give examples of your code this could help others? $\endgroup$
    – Dunlop
    Jun 14, 2017 at 20:11
  • $\begingroup$ at least partly answered here: mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/79524/… $\endgroup$
    – george2079
    Jun 14, 2017 at 20:22
  • $\begingroup$ Look at RegionMember. You should simply check if a given point is a member of each of the spheres. $\endgroup$
    – yohbs
    Jun 14, 2017 at 20:23
  • $\begingroup$ Looks like I could put together a solution using RegionMember, thanks @yohbs $\endgroup$
    – Evan
    Jun 14, 2017 at 20:38

2 Answers 2

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So the core of the problem is to determine of a point intersects a region. A Sphere is hollow, a Ball is solid, so you want Ball. Example here...

bunchofballs = Table[Ball[{x, 0, 0}], {x, 0, 4}]

Show[Graphics3D[bunchofballs]]

enter image description here

Now count intersections for a point p={1,0,0}

Count[Map[RegionMember[#, p] &, bunchofballs], True]

(*  3  *)
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MikeY's solution is the right thing to do in the general case. In the case of spheres you can gain a lot of computation time by checking directly if the distance to the sphere center is smaller than the radius. Here's a comparison for 10000 spheres:

(*set up the spheres:*)
n = 10000;
radii = RandomReal[{0.5, 1.5}, n];
centers = RandomReal[{0, 10}, {n, 3}];
bunchofballs = Table[Ball[centers[[i]], radii[[i]]], {i, n}];
(*see how many spheres contain p0:*)
p0 = RandomReal[{0, 10}, 3];
AbsoluteTiming@Count[Map[RegionMember[#, p0] &, bunchofballs], True]
AbsoluteTiming@ Count[Table[Norm[p0 - centers[[i]]] < radii[[i]], {i, n}],True]
(*Output:
{4.75374, 28}
{0.038338, 28}
*)

That's a 100 times faster.

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    $\begingroup$ + faster still UnitStep[radii - (Norm[# - p0] & /@ centers)] // Total $\endgroup$
    – george2079
    Jun 15, 2017 at 14:28

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