rbox(1)

hey bestie! 💖 welcome to rbox(1), straight from the General Commands Manual. this is your girl explaining rbox — the tool that generates point distributions for qhull. periodt. ✨

✨ NAME ✨

rbox — generate point distributions for qhull 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

command rbox (w/o arguments) lists the options. 💅

no cap, just run it with no args and it spills the tea on all the options.

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

rbox generates random or regular points according to the options given, and outputs the points to stdout. the points are generated in a cube, unless 's' or 'k' option is given. the format of the output is the following: first line contains the dimension and a comment, second line contains the number of points, and the following lines contain the points, one point per line. points are represented by their coordinate values. 🌸

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

• rbox 10 — 10 random points in the unit cube centered at the origin. 🧚
• rbox 10 s D2 — 10 random points on a 2‐d circle. 💫
• rbox 100 W0 — 100 random points on the surface of a cube. 🎲
• rbox 1000 s D4 — 1000 random points on a 4‐d sphere. 🌐
• rbox c D5 O0.5 — a 5‐d hypercube with one corner at the origin. 👑
• rbox d D10 — a 10‐d diamond. 💎
• rbox x 1000 r W0 — 100 random points on the surface of a fixed simplex. 🔺
• rbox y D12 — a 12‐d simplex. ✨
• rbox l 10 — 10 random points along a spiral. 🌀
• rbox l 10 r — 10 regular points along a spiral plus two end points. 🌈
• rbox 1000 L10000 D4 s — 1000 random points on the surface of a narrow lens. 🔍
• rbox c G2 d G3 — a cube with coordinates +2/-2 and a diamond with coordinates +3/-3. 💠
• rbox 64 M3,4 z — a rotated, {0,1,2,3} x {0,1,2,3} x {0,1,2,3} lattice (Mesh) of integer points. 'rbox 64 M1,0' is orthogonal. 🧊
• rbox P0 P0 P0 P0 P0 — 5 copies of the origin in 3-d. try 'rbox P0 P0 P0 P0 P0 | qhull QJ'. 🫶
• r 100 s Z1 G0.1 — two cospherical 100-gons plus another cospherical point. 🌸
• 100 s Z1 — a cone of points. 🔺
• 100 s Z1e-7 — a narrow cone of points with many precision errors. 💀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• n — bestie, this is the number of points. 💖
• Dn — dimension n-d (default is 3-d). ✨
• Bn — bounding box coordinates (default 0.5). 🎀
• l — spiral distribution, available only in 3-d. 🌀
• Ln — lens distribution of radius n. may be used with 's', 'r', 'G', and 'W'. 🔍
• Mn,m,r — lattice (Mesh) rotated by {[n,-m,0], [m,n,0], [0,0,r], ...}. use 'Mm,n' for a rigid rotation with r = sqrt(n^2+m^2). 'M1,0' is an orthogonal lattice. for example, '27 M1,0' is {0,1,2} x {0,1,2} x {0,1,2}. '27 M3,4 z' is a rotated integer lattice. 🧊
• s — cospherical points randomly generated in a cube and projected to the unit sphere. 🌐
• x — simplicial distribution. it is fixed for option 'r'. may be used with 'W'. 🔺
• y — simplicial distribution plus a simplex. both 'x' and 'y' generate the same points. 🔻
• Wn — restrict points to distance n of the surface of a sphere or a cube. 🎲
• c — add a unit cube to the output. 🧊
• c Gm — add a cube with all combinations of +m and -m to the output. 💠
• d — add a unit diamond to the output. 💎
• d Gm — add a diamond made of 0, +m and -m to the output. 💠
• Cn,r,m — add n nearly coincident points within radius r of m points. 🌸
• Pn,m,r — add point [n,m,r] to the output first. pad coordinates with 0.0. 📍
• n — remove the command line from the first line of output. 🗑️
• On — offset the data by adding n to each coordinate. ➕
• t — use time in seconds as the random number seed (default is command line). ⏰
• tn — set the random number seed to n. 🎲
• z — generate integer coordinates. use 'Bn' to change the range. the default is 'B1e6' for six‐digit coordinates. in R^4, seven‐digit coordinates will overflow hyperplane normalization. 💀
• Zn s — restrict points to a disk about the z+ axis and the sphere (default Z1.0). includes the opposite pole. 'Z1e-6' generates degenerate points under single precision. ⚠️
• Zn Gm s — same as Zn with an empty center (default G0.5). 🕳️
• r s D2 — generate a regular polygon. ⬡
• r s Z1 G0.1 — generate a regular cone. 🔺

✨ BUGS ✨

some combinations of arguments generate odd results. 😭

report bugs to qhull_bug@qhull.org, other correspondence to qhull@qhull.org. 💌

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

qhull(1) 👑

✨ AUTHOR ✨

C. Bradford Barber bradb@shore.net

this iconic manual page is from the Geometry Center, dated August 10, 1998, and it's for rbox(1). stay slay, bestie. 💅✨