Hi Lorenzo,
To address your query on plotting a cylinder tilted along a reference line defined by two points, here's a function that takes in the start and end points to plot a tilted cylinder:
function plotTiltedCylinder(startPt, endPt, radius, color)
height = norm(endPt - startPt);
[x, y, z] = cylinder([radius, radius], 100);
z = z * height;
dir = endPt - startPt;
dir = dir / norm(dir);
% Create Rotation Matrix
Z = dir / norm(dir);
X = [1, 0, 0];
if abs(dot(Z, X)) > 0.99
X = [0, 1, 0];
end
X = X - dot(X, Z) * Z;
X = X / norm(X);
Y = cross(Z, X);
R = [X; Y; Z]';
cylinderCoords = R * [x(:)'; y(:)'; z(:)'];
x = reshape(cylinderCoords(1, :), size(x)) + startPt(1);
y = reshape(cylinderCoords(2, :), size(y)) + startPt(2);
z = reshape(cylinderCoords(3, :), size(z)) + startPt(3);
surf(x, y, z, 'FaceColor', color, 'EdgeColor', 'none');
end
For further understanding, refer to the following documentation:
To create the spline, you can use the Curve Fitting Toolbox and plot the resulting function. Here's an example using a cubic spline:
splinePoints = [startPoint; middlePoint; [middlePoint(1), middlePoint(2), 0]];
splineCurve = cscvn(splinePoints');
fnplt(splineCurve, 'g', 2);
For more on spline constructions, check out:
This results in something similar to the below image:
