I think it might be faster because there are more cases in which it might escape before doing any serious calculations?  When I looked at your version, it calculated several things up front, before it checked to see if we could escape.  Or am I wrong in thinking that?

What you've done there is kind of what I've been working with in shrinkwrapping.  How would you try to accomodate the split between the legs?  Part of my trouble has been moving verts without hits into line with the others.  Another problem has been dealing with shrink cases in which the normals of the shrinking object don't handle so well for the purpose of the shrink.

Mind you, this is veering OT for TDMT discussion, isn't it?

I'd forgotten what a headache scaling is!  Translate to world center, then scale, then translate back.  Feh.

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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.