Rotate line around center point given two vertices

The coordinates of the center point (cx,cy) of a line segment between points (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) are:

    cx = (x1 + x2) / 2
    cy = (y1 + y2) / 2

In other words it's just the average, or arithmetic mean, of the two pairs of x and y coordinate values.

For a multi-segmented line, or polyline, its logical center point's x and y coordinates are just the corresponding average of x and y values of all the points. An average is just the sum of the values divided by the number of them.

The general formulas to rotate a 2D point (x,y) θ radians around the origin (0,0) are:

    x′ = x * cos(θ) - y * sin(θ)
    y′ = x * sin(θ) + y * cos(θ)

To perform a rotation about a different center (cx, cy), the x and y values of the point need to be adjusted by first subtracting the coordinate of the desired center of rotation from the point's coordinate, which has the effect of moving (known in geometry as translating) it is expressed mathematically like this:

    tx = x - cx
    ty = y - cy

then rotating this intermediate point by the angle desired, and finally adding the x and y values of the point of rotation back to the x and y of each coordinate. In geometric terms, it's the following sequence of operations:  Tʀᴀɴsʟᴀᴛᴇ ─► Rᴏᴛᴀᴛᴇ ─► Uɴᴛʀᴀɴsʟᴀᴛᴇ.

This concept can be extended to allow rotating a whole polyline about any arbitrary point—such as its own logical center—by just applying the math described to each point of each line segment within it.

To simplify implementation of this computation, the numerical result of all three sets of calculations can be combined and expressed with a pair of mathematical formulas which perform them all simultaneously. So a new point (x′,y′) can be obtained by rotating an existing point (x,y), θ radians around the point (cx, cy) by using:

    x′ = (  (x - cx) * cos(θ) + (y - cy) * sin(θ) ) + cx
    y′ = ( -(x - cx) * sin(θ) + (y - cy) * cos(θ) ) + cy

Incorporating this mathematical/geometrical concept into your function produces the following:

from math import sin, cos, radians

def rotate_lines(self, deg=-90):
    """ Rotate self.polylines the given angle about their centers. """
    theta = radians(deg)  # Convert angle from degrees to radians
    cosang, sinang = cos(theta), sin(theta)

    for pl in self.polylines:
        # Find logical center (avg x and avg y) of entire polyline
        n = len(pl.lines)*2  # Total number of points in polyline
        cx = sum(sum(line.get_xdata()) for line in pl.lines) / n
        cy = sum(sum(line.get_ydata()) for line in pl.lines) / n

        for line in pl.lines:
            # Retrieve vertices of the line
            x1, x2 = line.get_xdata()
            y1, y2 = line.get_ydata()

            # Rotate each around whole polyline's center point
            tx1, ty1 = x1-cx, y1-cy
            p1x = ( tx1*cosang + ty1*sinang) + cx
            p1y = (-tx1*sinang + ty1*cosang) + cy
            tx2, ty2 = x2-cx, y2-cy
            p2x = ( tx2*cosang + ty2*sinang) + cx
            p2y = (-tx2*sinang + ty2*cosang) + cy

            # Replace vertices with updated values
            pl.set_line(line, [p1x, p2x], [p1y, p2y])

Your center point is going to be:

centerX = (x2 - x1) / 2 + x1
centerY = (y2 - y1) / 2 + y1

because you take half the length (x2 - x1) / 2 and add it to where your line starts to get to the middle.

As an exercise, take two lines:

line1 = (0, 0) -> (5, 5)
then: |x1 - x2| = 5, when the center x value is at 2.5.

line2 = (2, 2) -> (7, 7)
then: |x1 - x2| = 5, which can't be right because that's the center for
the line that's parallel to it but shifted downwards and to the left