Ian:  You've hit upon one of the ideas I put down in my notebook, after logging off last night.  :lol:  That would return the value I had intuitively expected from the squaring, before my brain kicked in and I thought about what was really happening.  I believe this code could get it there:

mults = 0
if (threshold < 1.0) and (abs(threshold) == threshold):
    while threshold < 1.0:
        threshold = 10
        mults += 1
    threshold = threshold2
    threshold  /= (mults10)

This would raise the threshold value to where I'd expected.  The question is whether the increase is actually proportionally correct for comparison against the squared distance values.  I'm prepared to favor a hack like this, if it will help generate with the non-.pyd version the same basic results available for the .pyd version, while retaining the greater speed of using squared distances.

So, no need to apologize for your suggestion.  We're thinking along similar lines.  :lol:  I hope no one will be afraid to present their thoughts or ideas in this thread, even if the ideas turn out not to work as hoped.  I do that a lot, myself.  I'm wrong more than right.  :lol:

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Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.