I want to apply a path effect (bend path) to two objects simultaneously. One object is red, the other purple. As I've found out it wont work if you group the two objects as you can only apply the path effect to one object at a time. The way that I've found to do this is to combine the two shapes (ctrl+k) then apply the path effect and then break them apart (ctrl+shift+k). The only problem I have with this is that it changes the colour of both shapes to just red, meaning that once I've broken apart the shapes I have to reapply their colour.

Is there a way to combine shapes but to have them retain their colour and other properties?

hellocatfood wrote:Is there a way to combine shapes but to have them retain their colour and other properties?

Grouping is the only way to do this, but as you found it doesn't work when bending the paths. I think the only thing you can do is to request that the bend path code be modified to work with groups. But sometimes these limitation cannot always be easily worked around.