I have a diagram containing paths, rectangles and text objects. Some of them are grouped.

What I'd like to do is to select a part of the drawing and move it away from other objects, while maintaining connections between both parts. This means stretching paths (and perhaps rectangles) when necessary.

Currently I'm doing the following:
1. Selecting all objects in the drawing,
2. Switching to a node edit tool,
3. Selecting nodes that I want to move away.
4. Dragging them.

That works great for drawings with paths only but it fails for:
a) grouped objects (step 1 selects whole groups, not elements inside them)
b) non-path objects (step 3 fails to select any rectangles, text objects etc.)

So, the question is, how do you perform this kind of operation? It seems to be a very basic function (or at least it was in about every engineering cad tool I used) so I'm probably missing something obvious.

Cheers,
Andrzej

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Despite your very clear description, I'm not entirely clear what you're doing. Based on what I do understand, you could ungroup to avoid problem a. As far as the other things, if you select everything that you want to stretch, you could used the Selection tool to stretch the selection wider. But that would not have the same precision as moving nodes. It would stretch everything that's selected, not just from a certain point, like with moving some nodes and leaving others alone.

Or you could convert shapes and text into paths.

While Inkscape can do a lot of the things CAD programs can do (apparently, from what I understand), it can't do everything. If my answer doesn't work, you might want to provide a screenshot of your process, so I and others can have a better idea what you need.

Hi brynn,

You're pretty close. Perhaps "stretching" isn't the best word for what I'm trying to do. Think of a "diagram connector" tool - I want to move one part of a drawing aside while (roughly) maintaining connections between moved objects and the rest of the diagram. Actually, using connectors instead of paths would be one solution but I found this tool less flexible and reliable than regular Bezier paths.

The drawing itself is a kind of an electric circuit diagram + some annotations and decorations. Paths work just fine but I'm also extensively using grouping and other primitives (circles, rectangles).

You're right that ungrouping solves part of the problem. Another option is to Ctrl+Shift+click on all the internal paths inside groups to add them to the selection (in step 1). I'm using both of these techniques but was hoping for something less invasive and more convenient.

As for (b) I'm currently dividing the whole procedure into two steps. First I'm stretching all the paths using node edit tool. Then, using a selection tool, I moving non-path objects into the new position.

So, well, it can be done but the whole process is rather cumbersome. That's why I'm asking if anyone knows a simpler way of doing the same thing.

I can't think of any, but others may have some ideas

Very old thread, but I have the same problem as Andrzej in stretching diagrams (like circuit schematics and flowcharts) to insert more elements without an incredibly large number of clicks, and thought I could help illustrate this further for the benefit of Inkscape's schematic users everywhere.

So I've added additional description and a sample file to his feature request in launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/818002

Hopefully someone with better programming skills than me is interested in picking this up! Would really love this feature...