--- /dev/null
+## Copyright (c) 2011 Juan Pablo Carbajal <carbajal@ifi.uzh.ch>
+##
+## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+## it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
+## (at your option) any later version.
+##
+## This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+## but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
+## GNU General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with this program; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+%% -*- texinfo -*-
+%% @deftypefn {Function File} {@var{polygon} = } shape2polygon (@var{shape})
+%% @deftypefnx {Function File} {@var{polygon} = } shape2polygon (@dots{},@var{property},@var{value},@dots{})
+%% Transforms a 2D shape described by piecewise smooth polynomials into a polygon.
+%%
+%% @var{shape} is a n-by-1 cell where each element is a pair of polynomials
+%% compatible with polyval.
+%% @var{polygon} is a k-by-2 matrix, where each row represents a vertex.
+%% The property-value pairs are passed to @code{curve2polyline}.
+%%
+%% @seealso{polygon2shape, curve2poyline}
+%% @end deftypefn
+
+function polygon = shape2polygon (shape, varargin)
+
+ polygon = cell2mat ( ...
+ cellfun (@(x) curve2polyline(x,varargin{:}), shape,'UniformOutput',false) );
+ polygon = simplifypolygon(polygon);
+
+ if size (polygon, 1) == 1
+ polygon(2,1) = polyval (shape{1}(1,:), 1);
+ polygon(2,2) = polyval (shape{1}(2,:), 1);
+ end
+
+endfunction
+
+%!demo
+%! shape = {[-93.172 606.368 -476.054 291.429; ...
+%! -431.196 637.253 11.085 163.791]; ...
+%! [-75.3626 -253.2337 457.1678 328.5714; ...
+%! 438.7659 -653.6278 -7.9953 380.9336]; ...
+%! [-89.5841 344.9716 -275.3876 457.1429; ...
+%! -170.3613 237.8858 1.0469 158.0765];...
+%! [32.900 -298.704 145.804 437.143; ...
+%! -243.903 369.597 -34.265 226.648]; ...
+%! [-99.081 409.127 -352.903 317.143; ...
+%! 55.289 -114.223 -26.781 318.076]; ...
+%! [-342.231 191.266 168.108 274.286; ...
+%! 58.870 -38.083 -89.358 232.362]};
+%!
+%! % Estimate a good tolerance
+%! n = cell2mat(cellfun(@(x)curveval(x,rand(1,10)), shape, 'uniformoutput',false));
+%! dr = (max(n(:,1))-min(n(:,1)))*(max(n(:,2))-min(n(:,2)))*40;
+%! p = shape2polygon (shape,'tol',dr);
+%!
+%! figure(1)
+%! shapeplot(shape,'-b');
+%! hold on;
+%! drawPolygon (p,'-or');
+%! hold off