An option so anchor points within a user specified proximity of the selected anchor point will move relative to it.
So many times have I found a need for an option like this. An option where you would be able to move an anchor point, and the surrounding points would move relative to it.
Some complex vector images with lots of anchor points can be hard to reshape, whereas, instead of moving every single anchor point to expand a section or redoing it, you would select a single point, and the surrounding points would move relative to it's position.
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Sorry for the late answer.
In fact, you can do it in Illustrator, it’s just the method is not that widely known, and Ai does nothing to promote it enough, and it does not work exaclty like 'soft selections' in 3D editors, because Ai has no such a thing as 'softly selected' points.Take a look at the GIF attached.
First, I select those point I want to affect with Direct Selection tool.
Then I pick Reshape tool — usually it’s hidden Scale/Shear tool group in the Advanced tool panel (and is completely hidden in the Basic one).
Then I click (or marquee) with the tool to make some point focal, that is those which will affect other points in the selection.
Finally, I drag the selection by one of the focal points.
Here you are, the non-focal points get pulled by focal ones.Notice, that I had to lower the size of points (via Preferences > Selection & Anchor Display section) to the minimum, because the Ai team forgot to fix the highlighting of the focal points for larger size values — you won’t be able to see those squares around focal points.
Here you can read the official manual for the tool (and it’s quite scarce):
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/adjust-path-segments.html#stretch-parts-of-a-pathIf you are looking for a solution which does not really into keeping original points, but allow you to 'sculpt' a path with a greater freedom, you might want to look at the paid Reform tool from Astute Graphics (look for videos on YouTube, they have some).
