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Convex Hull of an sf Object

convex_hull_sf.Rd

Computes the convex hull of an `sf` object, returning the boundaries of the smallest polygon that can enclose all geometries in the input.

Usage

convex_hull_sf(sf_object)

Arguments

sf_object

An `sf` data frame object containing geometries.

Value

An `sf` object representing the convex hull of the input geometries.

Details

The convex hull is the smallest convex polygon that encloses all points in the input `sf` object. This function computes the convex hull by first uniting all geometries in the input using `st_union()`, and then applying `st_convex_hull()` to obtain the polygonal boundary. The result is returned as an `sf` object containing the convex hull geometry.

See also

st_convex_hull, st_union

Examples

library(sf)
#> Linking to GEOS 3.12.1, GDAL 3.8.4, PROJ 9.4.0; sf_use_s2() is TRUE

# Create example sf object
points <- st_sfc(st_point(c(0,0)), st_point(c(1,1)), st_point(c(2,2)), st_point(c(0,2)))
sf_points <- st_sf(geometry = points)

# Calculate the convex hull
convex_hull_result <- convex_hull_sf(sf_points)

# Plot the result
plot(sf_points, col = 'blue', pch = 19)
plot(convex_hull_result, add = TRUE, border = 'red')