I have a layer of shapes and a layer of paths that I am using as the source for laser cutting some objects. My goal is to clip the paths to the outline of the shapes, then move the resulting paths and shapes close together to prevent material waste when cutting. So far, I have done the clipping portion as follows:

• Separate shapes and paths into two layers
• Duplicate shapes layer and rename "Shapes - clipping" and hide original shapes layer
• Group all shapes together (click and drag around them, then object->group)
• Move clipping layer to be above paths
• select all shapes from the clipping layer and all paths by using the pointer tool to shift+click and drag a box around everything
• Objects->clip->set
• Unhide original shapes layer

Which causes the image to be clipped as I expect:


What I can't figure out now is how to independently move each of these shapes. If I try to alt click and drag across the paths, and adding a single circle to the selection, it ends up selecting all the paths and moving them as one. How do I instead move just the paths clipped by a single circle? Is it possible to separate the paths based on the shape so that they are no longer connected "underneath" the clipped layer? My goal (pardon the MSPaint mockup) is to change the move behavior after clipping to behave as follows:


Thanks!

I would avoid the layers and make duplicates or clones of the object to be clipped and clip those with the clipping path(s).

I thought of that as a possibility, but am hoping to avoid that route. This is a simplified example of the real case I am trying to do, which is to etch road data onto a topographical map. The actual design I'm etching has something like 50 shapes that will be used to clip the (very intricate, large and time consuming to copy) path layer, which would end up being a huge amount of copying and pasting if I were to have a separate copy of the path layer for each of those 50+ shapes.

Just a really silly question I've always wanted to ask:

Do clips (instead of real Boolean cuts) actually work when you send the data to your laser engraver? I'm asking because clipping only hides parts of the path, they are still there. So the transformation to the data format for the engraving machine would need to turn the clip into a Boolean operation, as the engraver will only follow paths. Does it do that?

I'm actually not sure about that one... normally when etching, I switch the cutter into raster mode. I'm normally etching something grayscale, which I don't know how to do with a vector image, as I don't know how to get the laser cutter to do variable power to get variable cut depths with a vector.

Much more interestingly, though, is that I think you might have pointed me in the right direction for what I need to be doing. I was unaware of the cut paths tool, and I think this might be what I need. So if I combine my paths into a single path, then use the cut path function after selecting the shapes and lines layers, I end up with paths that have breaks where they intersected the shapes. Is it possible then to automatically select everything outside of the objects in the shapes layer for a mass delete? Or am I stuck alt+click and dragging to individually select the cut portions of the path for deletion?

Maybe you're looking for 'Invert selection'? See https://inkscape.org/en/doc/keys091.html#d0e2399 (! or Alt+!)

Didn't know you would be using a raster representation - but for etching, that makes sense

Some lasers cutters will etch/engrave everything except lines that are stroked to "hairline" or less than .003". So any filled object will engrave and any path with a stroke wider than hairline will engrave too. The engraved areas don't usually need to be converted to raster in the graphic... the laser software should handle that, in the sense that it will zip back and forth across the area firing the laser in a line array process like a CRT scan.

Similarly, the laser software should have a mode to interpret greyscale fills as engrave power; lighter often being less power and darker being more power (and therefore engraved deeper). Another mode should allow mapping specific colors to preset engraving power levels.

What make/model laser cutter?

I don't see dozens of copies being a big issue... scores or hundreds might need a more elaborate approach.