Hi Meb,
In my case I only want to merge the overlapping ones. Doing what you describe leads to also joining the ends of non overlapping nodes to those of others.
I am attaching the file as It is exported from the boogie board sync. You can give it a try if you would like to
Import to designer and try.
Joining works fine on the twirl and simple lines, but when you try it on the sketch of a head- it fails
More info about what the boogie board sync is
https://myboogieboard.com/products/sync
Its a great little tablet that creates clean vector pdf files.
Btw, if there is anything I can offer to help implement this- there is an extension for inkscape that does exactly that:
https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-chain-paths
Many commercial CAD packages create object contours consisting of separate path snippets using adjacent end points. Such objects cannot be used in path operations like "add", "intersect", "difference", as they are technically a set of objects, rather than a single stroke.This extension forms a longer path from multiple shorter path segments.
BB_00105.PDF