Hi chipp,

> Just to throw a monkeywrench in all of this, I'm thinking he's talking about
> plain old object hierarchy and instances.

Probably yes for some of the examples, but this particular one here seems to be a constraint based editing mechanism:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7404.6

That's something like constrain one line endpoint to be on a circle, constrain the lengths of the other lines and a couple of locations of other endpoints, then move the unlocked endpoint around and have it recalculate.

I think that's the particular image that made me realize that constraints are what's being asked for.

- Michael