I am making a pattern based on lots of clones of a single object. The trouble is, that if I make too many clones it crashes the program, which it surely will if I try to clone what I have so far.



Is there are way to make all of these clones into one object before I clone them again? Grouping doesn't make it any better, because it still recognises that there are a whole bunch of objects there. I want it to remain in vector format.

Unless you are running a very memory challenged system your drawing does not look like it should crash inkscape. How much RAM, & on what OS?
You implied that you are trying to 'make all these clones into one before cloning again.'
One thing to watch out for with clones is that you should definitely never try to clone a clone. If you need more clones, duplicate the clone. You don't have to convert it or anything.

Why should you not clone a clone (sorry if that's a silly question - I've just jumped in and started experimenting)? I started with one dot, then cloned that to get the line of dots. Then I grouped them, and made a radial clone of those. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, 8GB RAM. I'm getting a new HDD soon - upgrading to SSD, but there's still plenty of space. I built it for gaming, so I didn't expect to run into any issues, but the whole thing runs very slowly.

If I remember correctly cloning a clone seems to work just fine at first and then your system slows down more and more and finally ... . Maybe it's fixed by now so if it works for you you should do it. Inkscape is of course constantly being rewritten and improved.

Did you try pressing Shift+Alt+D after each cloning from the start, that resulted in that single pattern,
and tried to combine the dots together by pressing Ctrl+K,
or the more savage Ctrl++ to add them together?
-In my opinion that boolean would produce a nicer result.-

Both of them should work, but even if it wouldn't, that pattern can be drawn at least two ways without any cloning involved.
Chime back if you couldn't solve it.

Nope, but that sounds like the kind of thing I need to do. I simply grouped them with the group button. Paths are new to me, so I haven't ventured too far in that direction yet. Is there a good tutorial that can explain them on a basic level, how they work, and what they work with? For example, I've notice that if I have several objects, such as shapes or lines, even if they are grouped into two separate entities I can't use the pathing options like difference. I have to do them two objects at a time.

It is possible to do those things with the elements of the group by entering it.
To enter a group, you can press Ctrl+Enter, then select the object -path- of the group that you want to subtract from.
Or use the node editor tool to select that object.
After the boolean, you can exit the group by pressing Ctrl+Backspace or by selecting an object outside the group.

It is, the clones that cannot be edited.
They can be changed only by their parent object, or after releasing their clone link.

Some info on paths:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Paths-Combining.html
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Paths-Editing.html#Paths-Misc
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Paths.html