Good afternoon Shireen and ShapeWorks users,

I wanted to follow up with an email of a few questions I had in our meeting yesterday.  

I was very excited to see some updates to ShapeWorks studio, especially the new optimization feature that provides live updates for particle placement!  Unfortunately, I'm having a tough time finding the newest release on your GitHub page.  Has it been made available to the public yet?  On that same note, is there somewhere I might be able to access the monthly presentations given by your group?  

You had mentioned that there was an individual who had worked on the pelvis.  I was hoping you could provide me with their contact information so I might ask them what their ideal optimization parameters were.  I'm interested in this case because it is the closest example I've heard of that might have comparable topologies (empty space in the center of the object, various protrusions of differing sizes, grossly spherical shape compared to something oblong, like femurs) to my interest - vertebrae.  Additionally, you suggested the use of a python script from the command line tools that utilizes surface normals for particle placement during optimization; could you remind me of the name of that script, please?  

Finally, I was wondering about exporting the PCA mesh following reconstruction.  During reconstruction, there is an option available for mesh decimation percentage.  When using the export PCA mesh command, will the exported mesh reflect the mesh decimation parameters that are set by the user?  Also, is there any way to reduce or even specify the resolution of the mesh that is exported?  I'm guessing these resolution settings would need to be somewhat similar to the chosen number of particles, where, although a user may choose a number of particles, ShapeWorks must use a preset number of particles that are as close as possible to the user-specified number of particles.    

Thanks again for putting together a nice presentation and including some examples!  Looking forward to seeing next month's updates.

Best,

Austin Tapp