![]() | Locuses |
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Kig has support for geometrical locuses. A locus is a concept from high school math. Briefly put, it is the figure defined by all the points that a point moves over, when another point moves along its constraints. This may sound a little complicated, but in fact, it's not a difficult concept, as the following example demonstrates.
Consider the following geometrical construction: We draw a circle, and a point that can move over its surface (construct this point by positioning the cursor on a circle, and clicking the middle mouse button. If you then try to move the resulting point, you'll see that you cannot move it off the circle). Then, we draw a segment from that point to the center of the circle, and the midpoint of that segment.
Now if you move the point that is constrained to the circle, you can see that the second point moves along with it. If you would hold a pen above the second point, and you move the first point around the entire circle, a new circle, half the size of the other would be drawn. We'll see below that this is exactly what a locus does. The path that the second point travels while the first moves around the circle is what the locus will look like.
Actually constructing the locus is very easy. Click the locus button in the toolbar, or select Objects->Other->Locus from the menubar. Then select the constrained point as the moving point (the text Moving Point will appear as you move the mouse over it ), and the other as the dependent point. The locus will then appear.
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