vmtksurfaceendclipper does not work consistently

[kayarre]

when running the command:
vmtk vmtksurfaceendclipper -ifile simplification_fixed.ply -ofile simplification_fixed_clip.ply

I am also selecting points near the end of the model, I don't know if that effects things.

The command execute properly, but there is a unclipped triangle:

I run the same command selecting points on a different branch and have different results.

vmtk vmtksurfaceendclipper -ifile simplification_fixed.ply -ofile simplification_fixed_clip.ply

Done executing vmtksurfaceendclipper.
Writing PLY surface file.
ERROR: In /home/ksansom/build/vmtk/build/VTK/IO/PLY/vtkPLYWriter.cxx, line 122
vtkPLYWriter (0x49b3660): No data to write!
Output vmtksurfaceendclipper members:
Id = 0
Surface = vtkPolyData

[kayarre]

It appears there are two separate issues, The first is that the normal estimation routine gets an inverted normal sometimes and can't continue when the main body of the mesh has been clipped. The second issue is the one I listed above where the triangles are not fully clipped.

[kayarre]

After further investigation I have been able to discern that the normal estimation filter often inverts the normal which leads to clipping the surface that you want to keep.

the second issue i believe is due to clipping an anisotropic mesh, meaning the seamfilter consistently creates a small triangle that does not lie on the implicit plane. I was able to reduce the issue by remeshing the cells in the neighborhood of the implicit plane.