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I am trying to find a way to calculate the shortest path from one point to another without crossing the boundaries of a polygon. I would like to do it with QGIS as I do not have access to ArcGis.

It thought of a solution using network tools: 1) Fill the polygon with a given number of points 2) Generate all the possible links (figured as line vectors) between every pair of points 3) Suppress all the links that intersect my polygon boundaries 4) Use GRASS to calculate the shortest path between two given points

My problem is that I do not find a way to manage the 2nd step.

I found the "Flow Mapper plugin" in QGIS, but I really can't figure out how I am suppose to use it.

Any help would be more than welcome! :) Thanks a lot

Damien

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Can you share some detail on what you are trying to model here? Which real-world phenomenon should be represented? – underdark♦ Jun 8 '12 at 14:12
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Your proposal sounds like solutions already implemented in GRASS as r.cost or, more generally, in r.spread. Using raster format automatically takes care of steps (1) and (2); step (3) is the result of a simple mask operation. – whuber♦ Jun 8 '12 at 15:33
Are you happy with a using a bit of Python? – Nathan W Jun 9 '12 at 2:20
How many path segments are likely to be within the polygon? Knowing that is important to knowing whether you can realistically "brute force" this. – BradHards Dec 7 '12 at 22:39

closed as not a real question by underdark♦ Jan 6 at 22:03

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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For the 2nd step, generating links between the point pairs, have you looked at the MMQGIS Hub Lines plugin? It seems it can do what you want.

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