Ahhhh! I bypassed the pain of compromising on spokes with all sorts of lacing patterns. I started building in the 80's and our shop had a Phil Wood spoke cutter. I remember reading the manual on how to line up the top part of the die to get the best and deepest rolled threads. And we had a bonanza for employees for a month when we cleared out our inventory of every damn spoke you could think of and started to stock just a few brands in max length to cut to order. The double-butted, we stocked in more lengths but still cut to order within a centimeter or so. Most of our employees couldn't do math or follow formulas worth jack. There was an insert in our Sutherland's binder that the owners added on spoke length calculation. I was one of just two of us that actually used it. The other guys would pull reference spokes out of the box and line them up against a busted wheel to guess what the spoke length would be and then use the cutter. Most of the time, it worked okay. We had an acceptable lost rate with a cup strapped to the side of the work bench where the Phil Wood cutter was with all the bad length cuts we made and we'd take those spokes first and cut ever shorter spokes. Thank goodness for 700C and 26 inch wheels because many of our repairs were for 27 inch wheels initially, and the transition allowed us to use those rejects and re-cut them. Only two of us actually could accurately build wheels from scratch and get the right spoke length. Even then, most of the wrench-heads thought the formula was magic.

Interestingly, the article pointed to by the OP mentions the HPV projects. I recall building the training wheels 4X 36 spokes sew-up rear and 20 inch aero clincher front that were used by our rider, the former Junior World Sprint Champion (who came to attend Cal Berkeley Engineering). Those were custom cut spokes I did in my shop. I wanted so much to be precise and then short by 1mm to save weight. But thought twice and didn't do it. I also thought about alloy nipples and butted spokes but decided that weight wasn't a concern. Better to train on heavy spoked straight spoked wheels and brass nipples, and our rider was a pretty big guy on a semi-recumbent that would be pretty brutal on the rear wheel. I followed the formula and ended up with just another wheelset like I had always built. Our actual racing wheel set was a custom aero wheels from Campagnolo only used in competition. We set the collegiate HPV land speed record back in the day at Sac-State on a 2-wheel semi-recumbent with faring. 3 years later, I went back to visit the Mech. Engineers who were still at it but this time sponsored. Campy, Dexter Hysol Adhesives, Boeing, Ford Aerospace... all giving $$$. They were still riding on those training wheels, and later set the HPV world speed record on their own with their jr. world sprint champion rider somewhere in the Sierra Foothills. They had always wanted to beat Fast Freddy Markham. But their record lasted for a short time until someone broke their land speed record. The Sac-State competition bike was called "Concept Z." The World Record bike was called Z-prime or something like that. I wonder where those training wheels went. They were "bomb" proof, they claimed and heavier than hell! LOL! I guess it made riding the racing wheels feel lighter when it came time. Wonder where those guys are now? And where are those training wheels? I think I donated them.