• The community debated the design of an electron-beam-based machining or 3-D-printing process that would eliminate traditional cutting tools to improve replicability, while also addressing X-ray generation and the need for radiation-hardened electronics for space applications.  

• Participants examined whether decommissioned military tanks or aircraft could be used as carbon-rich feedstock for self-replicating systems, ultimately concluding that reliance on non-replicating components undermines true self-replication.  

• Links to SynBioSS (Synthetic Biology Software Suite) and GenoCAD were shared, with kanzure noting that SynBioSS appears to implement the GenoCAD vision and beginning to audit its file formats for compatibility with the .repo dataset.  

• Open-source CAD efforts were discussed, including avocado-cad.sourceforge.net, Blender CAD modeling tutorials, and BlendXML, alongside the challenge of storing 3-D models in repositories without losing metadata linkage.  

• BioModelWiki (http://neptune.cems.umn.edu/wiki) was identified as an SBML-based repository of computational biology models, though its accompanying software is Windows-only, and SynBioSS was similarly noted to need Linux porting.  

• The group explored extracting and validating data from the .repo XML dataset, emphasizing the need to formalize file formats and ensure sufficient process information for automated design validation.