Linking CCK Nodes

I have looked and looked but can't seem to find the answer, yet I suspect that when it is discovered, it will be simple.

I have a CCK node where the user makes selections to define a product type. Once that node is submitted, I want to automatically link to another CCK node the selections made in the first node are used by a computed field in the second node. This doesn't sound like an application of node reference to me, but I can't confirm.

How can I reference field values of one node within computed fields of a subsequent node? Or worded differently, how can I pass values from one node to another?

Thanks for your insight.