The blender plugin looks like it works like the Max garment maker.  I've had experience of that and it's pretty good fun :)

I know what you mean about using Cones for skirts, it can cause odd results.The type of skirt I'm doing dictates what I use.  If its a tightish shirt I will use a cylinder, merge it into V4 and go from there.  For a looser flowing skirt I use a cone, but it might as well be a flat disk with the angles I use :)

As to the poly placement you have reminded me of something I'd forgotten.  Max doesn't use regular polys at all in the garment maker, it makes a fairly random arrangement of quads to fill the space.  This gave a really nice flow to the cloth, I'm gonna to a skirt that way when I get home :) see how it comes out.

3D Coat is pretty alien as far as traditional polymodellers go, so I often forget to mention things that people wouldnt know if they didnt use it.  So appologies for the confusing descriptions :)

John,

Fugazi (without the aid of a safety net)

https://www.facebook.com/Fugazi3D