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Drawing in Perspective: Fit sphere into cube

Assuming I have a cube drawn in two-point perspective (or even three-point).

I'd like to draw a sphere inside the cube such that it touches all sides.
A sphere becomes a circle on paper.
How do I nd the center?
How do I nd the radius?
I thought at least nding the center would be trivial (drawing the diagonals) but I'm no longer so sure this gives
the right result.
Just to clarify, this is a pen & paper question. Rulers are ok, computers are not.
drawing

perspective

edited Sep 12 '14 at 5:03

asked Sep 12 '14 at 4:19

Stefan
135

1 Drawing diagonals should absolutely provide both center and radius. Scott Sep 12 '14 at 4:59
I'm not so sure because the center of a 3D-circle is not the center of the resulting 2D-ellipse. Maybe the same
thing happens with spheres? Stefan Sep 12 '14 at 5:02
You have to draw diagonals correctly :) Scott Sep 12 '14 at 5:23

2 Answers

To draw a sphere inside a cube, you rst need to nd its center. This is indeed quite
simple: just draw a straight line from each corner of the cube to the opposite corner. The
point where the lines intersect is the midpoint of the cube, and thus also the center of the
sphere drawn inside the cube:

(If these lines don't all intersect at the same point, your cube is not actually a cube, or
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DrawinginPerspective:FitsphereintocubeGraphicDesignStackExchange

(If these lines don't all intersect at the same point, your cube is not actually a cube, or
even a general cuboid.)
Now all you need to do is nd the radius of the sphere. Unfortunately, in the general case,
this is somewhat trickier than nding the center. The rst thing you need to do is nd the
midpoints of the faces, which can also be found by drawing diagonal lines across each
face:

These are the points where the sphere will touch the faces of the cube. The problem is
that, unless one of the faces happens to be exactly edge-on to your viewpoint (so that it
appears as just a line in the 2D projection), these points will not generally lie on the edge
of the circle obtained by projecting the inscribed sphere into 2D.
The solution is to rst sketch the great circles that connect the contact points on the
surface of the sphere. In the 2D projection, these will be ellipses that pass through four of
the contact points; they will also be tangent to the lines that divide each face into four
smaller squares (not shown), i.e. they will pass approximately halfway between the
diagonal lines:

Finally, pick the radius of the sphere so that it is tangent to these ellipses:

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Now, if you look carefully at the picture above, you'll notice that the sphere I've drawn is
not actually centered on the center point of the cube (and it's not even really a sphere, but
an ellipsoid). What gives? Well, the problem is that my "cube" isn't really a regular cube,
but just a rectangular cuboid (because I couldn't gure out how to get Inkscape's cube tool
to give me an actual regular cube, so I had to eyeball it, and got it a bit wrong). Still, it at
least looks like it's approximately nested inside the cube.
answered Dec 11 '14 at 18:34

Ilmari Karonen
8,509

17

39

You nailed it. I've read countless instructions on the web, all of them were wrong or only worked under some
assumptions (which the authors failed to mention). This is not just correct in all cases, it is also the clearest, best
written one. I really appreciate the effort you put into it. Stefan Dec 12 '14 at 12:21
Generally, an image of a sphere is not necessarily a circle, it may happen to be an ellipse; and the center of the
sphere is not necessarily projected into the center of the ellipse. Goblin Alchemist Feb 10 at 16:11

Once you nd the center, the radius will be the distance between the center and the top
edge of the Square.
answered Sep 12 '14 at 8:08

Riccardo
109

What exactly do you mean by 'top edge'? Stefan Sep 12 '14 at 15:12
one of the edges :) I said top just for phylosophical reasons. Riccardo Sep 12 '14 at 15:18
The edges are lines. Distances are between points :) Do you mean the distance between the center of the cube
and the center of an edge? Stefan Sep 12 '14 at 15:24
hmmm...this is not exactly right. You can calculate the distance from a point to a line:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_from_a_point_to_a_line Riccardo Sep 12 '14 at 15:27
Ok, you got me there. So you mean the shortest distance between the center and any point on the edge. That
might be the end of the edge (a corner) though. It totally depends on which edge you select. In isometric
perspective the radius could be 0. Stefan Sep 12 '14 at 15:31

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