Hello,

Inkscape is very convenient for drawing geological illustrations (mainly geological sections), but it lacks in my view a tool whose utility would be unvaluable. Or maybe this tool actually exist, but I did'nt find it.

Suppose you want to draw two shapes wit a common border. I make this by duplicating the shape with the correct form of border, selecting the second one with a part underlaying to the first one and making boolean difference. There are others ways to obtain the same result, but this one seems to be the simplest. The tool I'm looking for is the one that would allow me to simutaneously change the two shapes by moving one or more nodes on the common border. Imagine the time savings when you have to change the thickness of a geological layer or the shape of the contact between two layers !

Anyone has an idea ?

Thanks,

Teegee

For your purposes it would be best if you stacked your shapes instead of trying to butt them up against each other - sort of like - well, geologic strata! That way when you move a curve then the the layer underneath is revealed or obscured without any further work. The bottom layer would just be a large rectangle each succeding layer would be a smaller shape or several smaller shapes with or without strokes and color coded fills etc.

Well, that's what I already do, and I get the result I want, even if it's not intellectually satisfying. The main problem is that you can get a pretty big stack of layers... and that's the reason why I try to keep all my geological layers on the same drawing layer, and don't use the z order neither.

I have learned from a post in this forum (converting two closed paths in a single closed path) that the possibility of common borders does not exist in SVG 1 but could be implemented in SVG 2.
So I guess I have to wait, hoping that this great idea will be accepted.

Thank you for your attention to my question !