I am looking for an algorithm that will take inputs of xyz coordinates of a series of points, and xyz coordinates of an associated line plot and will output the closest point along the line plot to each of the points.
The most basic example I can give is the following:
lineX = [0:10];
lineY = lineX;
lineZ = lineY;
point1 = [5 5 5];
point2 = [5 5 10];
point2 = [2 2 2];
I would hope the algo would give me the nearest coordinates along the line segment of each point (point1_nearest = 5 5 5, point2_nearest = 5 5 5, point3_nearest = 2 2 2] Any help would be most appreciated!
The problem is in practice the line coordinates will be more complicated ([0 0 0; 0.4 10 6; 0.5 15 7]) and it gets tedious to iterate through each coordinate and find the minimum distance.
