TOPIC:

Let's take a simple case - Art director wants a flag draped on a pole with no wind and having signed that drape off wants to use that in future sims. Now I don't want to run the sim drape as lead in for every future sim, so how do I replicate that exact draped look at the start of a new sim?

Sounds easy right just grab the final frame of a draping sim and use it as the start mesh of the future sims.

Well not so fast, even with the same settings simulation result depends on the start mesh AND the reference mesh.
Carbon sets the Cloth reference mesh to be the same as the start mesh, unless you explicitly set it as a different mesh.
In this simple case you have the same start mesh in the future sim as the final frame of the original sim, but not the same reference mesh, unless you go in and set the reference mesh.

So set the reference mesh to the same as in the original sim (probably the start mesh of the original sim) and for a stationary draped flag you would get 99.9% the same result, maybe after a few frames for it to settle down. 

Just to note if your flag was in motion on the last frame then you would not be able to replicate the result just using the reference, because you can't inject the momentum that was present in the original sim.  You can however get exactly the same frame position by throwing some goal posing into the mix - see the examples in the docs for how to do that.

For further info on different mesh use cases see - www.numerion-software.com/index.php/foru...start-reference-goal