How to check if two gp_Pnt coincide in OpenCASCADE

If you have two points in OpenCASCADE:

gp_Pnt p1 = /* ... */;
gp_Pnt p2 = /* ... */;

you can’t just use == to check if they coincide in stock OpenCASCADE. However, OCCUtils provides operator== and operator!= for gp_Pnt among other types:

#include <occutils/Equality.hxx>

bool areTheyCoincident = p1 == p2;

If you can’t use OCCUtils, this is the way to check if they are coincident:

if (p1.Distance(p2) <= Precision::Confusion()) {
    // p1 coincides with p2
}

or alternatively:

if (p1.IsEqual(p2, Precision::Confusion())) {
    // p1 coincides with p2
}

The reason for this is that even though two points may represent the same point in space, depending on how you compute their coordinates exactly, their cartesian X/Y/Z coordinates might not be exactly identical. This is always the case with floating-point arithmetic, that’s the type of math computers use. Don’t confuse floating-point arithmetic with exact arithmetic which you have learnt in school or university.

The solution for this issue is to define a very small tolerance – any objects that have a distance less than that tolerance are considered equal.

In OpenCASCADE, Precision::Confusion() in the standard tolerance value for this.

My OCCUtils library provides