I'm not sure if this is an idea, or a feature that I don't know exists, but imagine I have two triangle objects, each with 3 nodes. Then I want one node from each object to be essentially the same node, so that when I move that node, each object changes shape accordingly. Keep in mind that the two triangle objects are in no way required to be the similarly shaped. This could happen at least two different ways, 1) the shared node is actually one node so that there are only 5 nodes total for the two triangle shaped objects, or 2) the common nodes are linked so that there are still 6 nodes total, but again any change to one of the common nodes causes the other node to change too.

Bill

It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. It would especially be useful for technical drawings.

An attenuated version of this feature already exists: If you activate (in document preferences, not global prefs) the 'snap to node' feature, you can position one node perfectly on top of another. If you then combine the two paths, the nodes stay separate, but can be simultaneoulsy selected and newly positioned. The 'combine' action leaves both paths with the same attributes (color etc), though. If this would work with 'group' too, it qould be perfect.

I think this is a great idea. I had this situation quite often. "snap to node" is a workaround, but a "group nodes" feature would be way better.

Any plans to include this feature? Is there already a feature request?

see also:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170922

In 0.48 will include my rewrite of the node tool, which allows you to select many objects at once; you'll then be able to select the relevant segments in both paths move them together.

This "gluing together" feature is slightly limited. A better idea is to allow nodes to be grouped like objects, combined with a feature that groups together closest pairs of nodes from different subpaths. This way you could create a gap between glued objects. However, this would require careful UI design and additional data stored in XML.