[Tagging] RFC - Feature Proposal - area of steps for pedestrians.

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 29 March 2019, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>
> > * you should be aware that you can't uniquely define the shape of a
> > two dimensional surface in three dimensions exclusively through the
> > shape of its outline.  You can do that in 2d (provided what you
> > have has a defined outline) but not in 3d.  That is simple
> > mathematics.  So you'd have to document what assumptions you make
> > regarding the shape of the surface, otherwise the meaning of your
> > proposal would be ill-defined.
>
> the general assumption for stairs is that all steps have the same
> height and same "depth".

That would not be a very sensible assumption since that would be 
impossible for any stairs where the upper and lower end are not 
equidistant across their whole length because then not all steps can 
have a constant depth.

But my point was a different one.  A polygon is by definition planar.  
If your modeling defines a non-planar outline (which it obviously does 
when you can have arbitrarily shaped upper and lower limits) then you 
need to make assumptions regarding how the shape derives from this 
outline.

> While I agree with you that for 3d you need height information (the
> area proposal has a suggestion for this), [...]

You need this for any rendering of the stairs that visualizes the 
individual steps in some form (because their form defines a 3d 
geometry - even if you don't render it in 3d).

> in the end, all areas can be represented as polygons [...]

Well - that depends on how you define "area" obviously.  A polygon is an 
attempt to describe a two dimensional planar entity through circular 
linestring representations of its edges.  Even for 2d entities where 
this is possible (i.e. that are planar and have a well defined inside 
and outside) it is often not the most efficient way of representing 
them.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/