Hello,

does anyone know of an algorithm which can find the angle from line1 to line2 in ccw (counter clockwise) sense (2d)? Angle between 2 lines can be found easily using dot product. however, the answer given is always < 180deg.

i'm currently using this algorithm, which seems quite inefficient ...

1. find angle of line1 & 2 wrt x axis 2. find which quadrant each line is pointing in 3. from the above 2 ans, deduce the angle from line1 to 2 in an ccw sense

e.g. if line1 & 2 are in 1st quadrant, 60deg & 40deg respectively so angle = 340deg

problem with this code is that there's as much as 16cases to consider.

Does anyone know of a shorter and more efficient algorithm? Thanks

I just thought of a shorter algorithm which I think should work but this needs to be verified; whether it is efficient also needs to be checked out.

1. Determine dot product as before and obtain the cosine

of the angle.

2. Determine cross product i.e. line 1 X line 2 and this

will give sine of the angle.

3. If sine and cosine are both positive or both negative

the take the angle obtained in 1. as it is. If not

define your counter-clockwise angle as 360 - the angle

obtained in 1.

Let me know if this works for you.

Ya i just found it on the web too. it's should work. thanks anyway. btw, the website is http://www.vb-helper.com/index.html. the algorithm is given in visual basic.