A new framework is proposed for generating trajectories for robots. This "path planning by analogy" approach uses problems and solutions acquired from previous operator teaching or automatic path planning. Unlike traditional path-planning methods, users need not specify goals or prepare search heuristics. Instead, users specify the correspondence of objects in the task environment to those in a reference environment. "Path planning by analogy" reduces the amount of operator instruction and the computational cost of making a path, and can generate a trajectory close to the desired trajectory.