I have no idea how to put this into a search, so I'm going to try to describe my question. I drew a picture of 2 squares, one inside the other. I copied them and turned it 30 degrees, so now have the lines of one pair over the other. I'd like to cut away what's inside, but leave the squares. How do I go about that?

The most obvious answer is to outline all the areas I want to cut away and save them into a couple layers while making the lines I don't want cut in a hidden layer. This is a bunch of work and I'm curtain that there must be a way to do it with just a few clicks, but I couldn't find it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

:-)

Big O

Select the first 2 squares and go Path->Combine - duplicate and rotate 30° (why 30°) - now select all and go Path->Union:

Thank you Polygon for the quick answer! Actually I have a much more complicated drawing, I used the 2 squares to make it simple to describe. I did what you told me to and now have everything hooked together, that's true. The problem now is that I normally want the inside spaces to be burned 1st and the outside line last so it doesn't fall through too soon. The result of Path->Union doesn't allow me to place things in different layers. Can that be done? 

If I could figure out how you added those 2 figures I'd put them here, but couldn't :-(

Hey wait, I just found my own answer (I think). I pressed Path->Break apart and now have everything as Polygons, so can assign them to different layers. Thanks for the tip!

Not sure how you set up the process. Maybe color fill for burning/engraving and stroke for cutting with or without offset? All is possible: