Bopper, you are a star. Thank you for your tutorial here.

Basically, what you are saying here is that there is no automatic or even semi-automatic way to set up conforming shoes if the mold or mannequin is not completely zeroed. In the earlier posts in this thread, I found that it is possible to do this semi-automatically IF the mold iscompletely zeroed. then it is just a matter of loading in the finished shoe, going into the setup room, loading the v4 dev kit rig, deleting the extra bones, setting fallof and joint angles and it is done.

If you model with a mold not zeroed then you have to fit the shoes manually in the way you have described above i.e. intricately and carefully, pretty much "by eye".