Does something like Illustrator's "Shape builder" exist in Inkscape

Question

Does a smarter boolean tool like Illustrator's Shape builder tool exist for Inkscape? Or a plugin maybe?

I know the same can be achieved with the Union/Difference/Intersection tools, but the Shape builder is a lot faster and less complex.

Answer 1

*Note: This is an old answer from 2018. See the accepted answer from user: Clarus Dignus on how to use the Shape Builder tool which was added to Inkscape 1.3 in 2023. I will leave this answer here for reference, but it's outdated. Might be useful for someone with an older version of Inkscape.

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There's no Shape Builder tool* equivalent in Inkscape, however there is one method to work round the difficulty of making new shapes from complex overlapping shapes.

So, let's say you have a bunch of overlapping shapes from which you want to create a design. Probably easier to make sure they are all just a stroke and no fill at this stage so you can see what's going on.

• Select them all and do Path > Combine
• Draw a rectangle that is larger than the shapes, lower it to the bottom, then select both the combined shape and rectangle.
• Do Path > Division
• Fill all the shapes temporarily so you can select them easily
• Then Select and Delete the parts you don't want, and do Path > Union on those you want to become a single shape.

For example

Obviously this technique isn't worth the trouble for fewer shapes where you'd probably be quicker using the boolean operations as they stand.

You can speed this up if you learn the shortcuts for some of the operations. I didn't use them in the above example so you can see what's going on, but here are some useful shortcuts:

Ctrl+A Select All

Ctrl+K Combine

Ctrl++ Union

F4 Rectangle Tool

F1 Select and Transform Objects Tool

End Lower to Bottom

Answer 2

As of 23 July 2023 (Inkscape 1.3), Inkscape now has a shape builder tool.