hexify: Assign hexagonal DGGS cell IDs to geographic points

In hexify: Equal-Area Hex Grids on the 'Snyder' 'ISEA' 'Icosahedron'

Assign hexagonal DGGS cell IDs to geographic points

Description

Takes a data.frame or sf object with geographic coordinates and returns a HexData object that stores the original data plus cell assignments. The original data is preserved unchanged; cell IDs and centers are stored in separate slots.

Usage

hexify(
  data,
  grid = NULL,
  lon = "lon",
  lat = "lat",
  area_km2 = NULL,
  diagonal = NULL,
  resolution = NULL,
  aperture = 3,
  resround = "nearest"
)

Arguments

data	A data.frame or sf object containing coordinates
grid	A HexGridInfo object from hex_grid(). If provided, overrides area_km2, resolution, and aperture parameters.
lon	Column name for longitude (ignored if data is sf)
lat	Column name for latitude (ignored if data is sf)
area_km2	Target cell area in km^2 (mutually exclusive with diagonal).
diagonal	Target cell diagonal (long diagonal) in km
resolution	Grid resolution (0-30). Alternative to area_km2.
aperture	Grid aperture: 3, 4, 7, or "4/3" for mixed (default 3)
resround	How to round resolution: "nearest", "up", or "down"

Details

For sf objects, coordinates are automatically extracted and transformed to 'WGS84' (EPSG:4326) if needed. The geometry column is preserved.

Either area_km2 (or area), diagonal, or resolution must be provided unless a grid object is supplied.

The HexData return type (default) stores the grid specification so downstream functions like plot(), hexify_cell_to_sf(), etc. don't need grid parameters repeated.

Value

A HexData object containing:

• data: The original input data (unchanged)

• grid: The HexGridInfo specification

• cell_id: Numeric vector of cell IDs for each row

• cell_center: Matrix of cell center coordinates (lon, lat)

Use as.data.frame(result) to extract the original data. Use cells(result) to get unique cell IDs. Use result@cell_id to get all cell IDs. Use result@cell_center to get cell center coordinates.

Grid Specification

You can create a grid specification once and reuse it:

grid <- hex_grid(area_km2 = 1000)
result1 <- hexify(df1, grid = grid)
result2 <- hexify(df2, grid = grid)

See Also

hex_grid for grid specification, HexData-class for return object details, as_sf for converting to sf

Other hexify main: hexify_grid()

Examples

# Simple data.frame
df <- data.frame(
  site = c("Vienna", "Paris", "Madrid"),
  lon = c(16.37, 2.35, -3.70),
  lat = c(48.21, 48.86, 40.42)
)

# New recommended workflow: use grid object
grid <- hex_grid(area_km2 = 1000)
result <- hexify(df, grid = grid, lon = "lon", lat = "lat")
print(result)  # Shows grid info
plot(result)   # Plot with default styling

# Direct area specification (grid created internally)
result <- hexify(df, lon = "lon", lat = "lat", area_km2 = 1000)

# Extract plain data.frame
df_result <- as.data.frame(result)

# With sf object (any CRS)
library(sf)
pts <- st_as_sf(df, coords = c("lon", "lat"), crs = 4326)
result_sf <- hexify(pts, area_km2 = 1000)

# Different apertures
result_ap4 <- hexify(df, lon = "lon", lat = "lat", area_km2 = 1000, aperture = 4)

# Mixed aperture (ISEA43H)
result_mixed <- hexify(df, lon = "lon", lat = "lat", area_km2 = 1000, aperture = "4/3")

hexify documentation built on March 1, 2026, 1:07 a.m.