How can I move a point parallel to a created plane?

I have created a triangle plane from three (x,y,z) coordinates, and a separate point which is in the centre of the triangle. I need to be able to move this point parallel to my created plane. Does anyone have any ideas how to do this? I have only managed to move this point perpendicular to my plane, using the cross function.

Answer 1

[Benjamin Großmann]

Assuming your points are called p1, p2 and p3: One simple approach would be to define a coordinate system (non-orthonormal) with axes (p2-p1) and (p3-p1) as in-plane axes and the cross-product of these axes as third axis. You can then move the point inside this coordinate system and transfrom it in the world system for plotting and further calculations. The z-axis of this triangle-system is perpendicular to the triangle plane.

clearvars
close all
clc

p1 = [8 3 7]';
p2 = [5 9 2]';
p3 = [3 8 1]';

points = [p1 p2 p3];

% Transformation from world frame to triangle frame
% non-orthonormal transformation (normalization possible)
T = [p2-p1 p3-p1 cross(p2-p1,p3-p1) p1; 0 0 0 1];

% Move the point in the Triangle frame and transform to world frame
point_in_triangle_system = [1 1 0 1]'; % the last "1" is for homogenization
point_in_world_system = T*point_in_triangle_system;

% plot triangle and point
fill3(points(1,:),points(2,:),points(3,:),'b','FaceAlpha',0.5)
hold on
plot3(point_in_world_system(1),point_in_world_system(2),point_in_world_system(3),'kx')

If you provide your code, some more specific help is possible; Furthermore, I am pretty sure that Robotics System Toolbox contains functions for the transformation.

[CA]

Thank you! This is exactly the concept I was looking for.