If I draw a line with the Bezier curve tool, I can then hover over a box around either end point of the line and click to "continue path from this point" to draw another line starting at exactly the same point.

I am trying to draw a triangle fan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_fan). You can see that point A has many lines coming from it. I can draw two lines from point A as I described above (say lines AF and AE). Now, however, the only points that seem to allow me to "continue path" are F and E, but not A.

How can I draw another (multiple) lines starting at A?

Thanks,
David

Hi David,
That's not possible with Inkscape yet. It's my understanding that developers are working ont it, though. (Although I could be wrong.)

You could use snapping (nodes and handles to cusp nodes) to get them aligned exactly on top of each other.

Hm, I turned on all of the snapping options in DocumentProperties->Snap but still when I draw a line it doesn't seem to indicate that it wants to snap to an existing line or line end-point. Am I missing something?

Ah, if I turn on "snap to paths" on the snap toolbar it lets me snap the end point of a new line, but how do I snap the beginning point?

daviddoria wrote:Ah, if I turn on "snap to paths" on the snap toolbar it lets me snap the end point of a new line, but how do I snap the beginning point?

Enable "Snap to Cusp Node" will let you do that.

You may have to play around with different snappings settings to find out


Tip of the day (make your day):
You can have one endpoint on a path snapping to a node on another node (presumabely not an end node). Then the two nodes will look as one node.
When you select one object and use the to move a node, you'll certainly already experienced that only one node moves.
To make both several nodes to move (center nodes in your case) simultaneously, you need to select ALL objects that have a node sharing the same location. Then you can use the node tool to move all nodes (you'll certainly like to call it a center node) in one move.

Tip2 (because this might not be obvious for you)
When all objects is selected (with either select tool or node tool), this is how you select the nodes you want to select:
Drag the to create a rectangular window that surounds the nodes that you want to select.

Have a Happy Day

I see, if I just go ahead and click near "A" it says "snapped" (even though it doesn't indicate that it is going to snap before I click, which is what I was expecting).

Also, when I have more than 2 lines converging at a point, it looks "messy" - the square end of a line is "sticking out" instead of being chopped/grouped into the point. Am I just going to have to live with that?

daviddoria wrote:Also, when I have more than 2 lines converging at a point, it looks "messy" - the square end of a line is "sticking out" instead of being chopped/grouped into the point. Am I just going to have to live with that?

You have to upload picture or file. I'm not bothered wit that error.

I see, even if I don't click on the correct "intersection" of all the lines, it still says "handle to path" snapping. I just need to make sure to click at the very "outside" of the intersection so it snaps to the right point and then the lines seems to merge/blend/chop as I would hope.

daviddoria wrote:Also, when I have more than 2 lines converging at a point, it looks "messy" - the square end of a line is "sticking out" instead of being chopped/grouped into the point.

If you have not resolved this to your satisfaction, it might be caused by your stroke style having endcaps; setting caps to none may fix things.

Also you could check your settings in the Snap tab of Document Properties. You can make the snap stronger or weaker.

Don't forget that 'Continue Path from Point' is available in the sense that you can add sub-paths to the selected or last created path with the pencil and pen tools (just press 'Shift' when drawing the next triangle will add it as sub-path to the selected path). You still can't draw tree- or star-shaped graphs (or meshes) though with more then two segments of a sub-path connected in the same node - that's just not how paths are defined in Inkscape and the underlying SVG file format.

And turn off the snap target 'to paths' if you only want to snap to cusp nodes anyway - this will make snapping more 'precise' in the sense that you don't trigger snap targets you actually are not interested in.