Merge (or remove) overlapping nodes in inkscape

Question

I am new to inkscape, and browsed few forums but could not find a solution for this.

I have a PDF with many "short" lines, some of them starting (exactly) where another one ends.

.

Is there a way to "simplify" this, by automatically merging (or removing?) the overlapping nodes? (Note that the actual PDF will have many more such lines, I attach a section of it for illustration purposes.)

The SVG is (I can't attach an SVG, can I?):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!-- Created with Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -->

<svg
   xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
   xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
   xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
   xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
   xmlns:sodipodi="http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/DTD/sodipodi-0.dtd"
   xmlns:inkscape="http://www.inkscape.org/namespaces/inkscape"
   id="svg8"
   version="1.1"
   viewBox="0 0 210 297"
   height="297mm"
   width="210mm"
   inkscape:version="0.92.4 (5da689c313, 2019-01-14)"
   sodipodi:docname="drawing.svg">
  <defs
     id="defs2" />
  <sodipodi:namedview
     id="base"
     pagecolor="#ffffff"
     bordercolor="#666666"
     borderopacity="1.0"
     inkscape:pageopacity="0.0"
     inkscape:pageshadow="2"
     inkscape:zoom="3.959798"
     inkscape:cx="396.86727"
     inkscape:cy="765.26497"
     inkscape:document-units="mm"
     inkscape:current-layer="layer1"
     showgrid="false"
     inkscape:window-width="2560"
     inkscape:window-height="1377"
     inkscape:window-x="-8"
     inkscape:window-y="-8"
     inkscape:window-maximized="1" />
  <metadata
     id="metadata5">
    <rdf:RDF>
      <cc:Work
         rdf:about="">
        <dc:format>image/svg+xml</dc:format>
        <dc:type
           rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage" />
        <dc:title></dc:title>
      </cc:Work>
    </rdf:RDF>
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
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       d="m 122.98285,79.668971 5.00785,-5.007856"
       id="path1990" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="M 112.96714,79.668971 117.975,74.661115"
       id="path1988" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="m 107.95928,79.668971 5.00786,-5.007856"
       id="path1986" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="m 102.95143,79.668971 5.00785,-5.007856"
       id="path1984" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="m 92.935715,79.668971 5.007852,-5.007856"
       id="path1982" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="m 82.92,79.668971 5.007854,-5.007856"
       id="path1980" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="M 77.912146,79.668971 82.92,74.661115"
       id="path1978" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="M 67.896431,84.676828 C 69.565716,83.007542 71.235,81.338257 72.904285,79.668971"
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
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       id="path1966" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
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       id="path1962" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
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       id="path1960" />
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       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="m 82.92,74.661115 5.007854,-5.007856"
       id="path1958" />
    <path
       style="display:inline;fill:none;stroke:#646464;stroke-width:0.86674434;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:miter;stroke-miterlimit:10;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"
       d="m 67.896431,74.661115 5.007854,-5.007856"
       id="path14834" />
  </g>
  <WCB
     application="Axidraw"
     row="0"
     randseed="0"
     pausedposy="0"
     pausedposx="0"
     lastknownposy="0"
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</svg>

Thanks!

plottah

Answer 1

The problem here is the way that the PDF has been constructed. Here is just one of those lines showing that it is made up of independent/unjoined paths. You can see each Path in the Object panel.

Unfortunately there's no easy fix for this. It might be quicker to recreate the artwork in Inkscape from scratch*

What you could do is select all the paths in a line, then select the inside nodes only by holding down Shift as you click and drag with the Select By Nodes tool, and then join them using Shift+J. Then Simplify will work. However, this would be an extremely tedious task for all of those lines.

*Recreating the artwork from scratch, using a grid and snap to grid, should be a simple enough. For example, this took only a few minutes. Each line in the example below was created using the Bézier tool without the addition of all these extra nodes. I copied and pasted whole parts of the pattern to speed it up.

Answer 2

The lines are ordered from bottom right to left and from bottom to top. All Segments are of the same length, or looking at it like in the raster, shown by Billy Kerr, each Segment is either filled with a diagonal line or not. All are of width of about 5.01 and height 5.01. So the 4th line which reaches the top border is 2 segments long and the upper part is the 4th to last one (path 1962).

m 97.943567,74.661115 5.007863,-5.007856

The connected segment isn't the next or last in the svg-file, but path 1982

m 92.935715,79.668971 5.007852,-5.007856

If you add (5.01, -5.01) to (92.9, 79.7) you get the coordinates of the previous segment:

92.935715,79.668971 
 5.007852,-5.007856
97.943567,74.661115

I didn't check whether this is true for all lines without rounding errors.

So with a programming language, you should be able to identify and combine such segments into fewer, but longer ones (here rounded, for laziness):

 m 92.935715,79.668971 10.016,-10.016

If this is a repeated task, it might be worth the effort. Else you might consider grouping all lines, turning the group by 45° degrees to get them all in horizontal or vertical direction, which makes it easier to mark a single line of many segments, then perform Billys join, then return them back by 45°.