Summary

First-time poster here, so please bear with me.

In Illustrator, you can use the pencil tool to quickly replace paths (it automatically replaces the old paths). For instance, if you're working on customizing letters for a logotype, you can draw on the letters and it'll replace the paths to create the new letter shape.

This has been discussed in the Inkscape forum (here). And while there is a workaround, it is extremely time-consuming and flawed.

The sped-up workflow would look like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ows4mzaD0hY&t=96s

Of course, I'm willing to help with whatever is necessary to make this a thing (don't know a lick of coding, however. My brother is a programmer though, so I could tap him to help).

Here are just 3 alternative approaches in the meantime:

@Polygon, thanks for the alternatives :). I didn't know you could do that with the transform tool.