Distance from a point to a line

[ehilge]

Hey all, I'm doing an engineering problem and I need find the perpendicular distance from a point to a line in three space. I seem to remember from my calculus that there is supposed to be a formula to find this but I can't seem to find the formula anywhere. So, first off, does this formula even exist, and if it does, what is it?

Thanks!

 

[jpreed]

You can get either the distance or the shortest vector. A pretty good summary is given here:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Point-LineDistance3-Dimensional.html

 

[ehilge]

thanks! that's exactly what I needed