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#1 2008-03-03 21:02:51

exquisitenick
Guest

How to find a point of the extension of a line.

Hello,
I want to create a line that is an extension of an other.
So, I want to find the ending point of the second line, knowing the slope of the first line.
How could we do this ?!

Thank you in advance for your help.

#2 2008-03-04 21:57:48

exquisitenick
Guest

Re: How to find a point of the extension of a line.

I found it in another forum

Let us call the x and y components in each of the ordered pairs as follows:
A = (Ax, Ay)
B = (Bx, By)
C = (Cx, Cy)

Now let us call the slope of the line m and it can be obtained from points A and B:
m = (By - Ay) / (Bx - Ax) = (Cy - By) / (Cx - Bx)

And suppose we want to extend the line by length L from point B to C, we know that:
L² = (Cx - Bx)² + (Cy - By)²

Using these two equations we can derive expressions for Cx and Cy in terms of known quantities. I won't go through the algebra here but the results are:
Cx = L / √(m² + 1) + Bx
Cy = L*m / √(m² + 1) + By

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