Snapping nodes together and keeping them connected

[gba]

I have been using inkscape in place of CAD for piping and instrumentation diagrams, and I'm completely amazed at how good it works for my purposes. The snap function really helps connect different objects in a consistent, easy way, and it's critical for making professional looking drawings which line up well.

However, you cannot connect objects in a way that keeps them connected at the node even if you move one of the objects. For example, if you connect a line to a box and you want to move the box but maintain the connection you cannot.

Also (separate problem), it's hard to easily realign lines to the straight vertical or horizontal after they are already created. When initially creating them, you can use ctrl, but once they are created ctrl no longers forces them along the straight vertical and horizontal axis.

If you could fix these few things, inkscape would be competitive with CAD on a lot of actually fairly complicated drawing work currently done in CAD!

Greg

[su_v (suv-lp)]

1) glue nodes together:
Bug #170922 “Glue nodes of one object to nodes of another”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170922>

2) connector lines:
> if you connect a line to a box and you want to move
> the box but maintain the connection you cannot.
Bug #171027 “multiple user-defined connector points”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/171027>

2) realign lines to the straight vertical or horizontal:
Snapping while rotating allows to realign edges of objects to the grid or to guide lines (available in current trunk (0.48+devel), milestoned for 0.49).
Bug #170919 “snapping with rotate”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170919>