How can I calculate the bounding box corners for a group of xy coordinates?

Question

I have a group of xy coordinates. For example:

10, 34
20, 45
20, 50
10, 20
10, 56
...

How can I calculate the bounding box corners for that coordinates?

Answer 1

To get the bounding box with sides parallel to the XY-axes you simply need to find the min/max of all the x and y koordiantes:

minx = min(xcoords);
maxx = max(xcoords);
miny = min(ycoords);
maxy = max(ycoords);

The bounding box has corners in (minx, miny), (minx, maxy), (maxx, maxy), (maxx, miny).

Answer 2

The following Wikipedia page offers some insights on algorithms used to find the minimum oriented bounding rectangle (2D) and box (3D): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_bounding_box_algorithms