A signed distance field (SDF for those watching from the sidelines) is exactly defined as the distance from the lookup point to the nearest point on the surface. This means that there is no way to read the distance without computing the nearest point. We are not utilizing any discretization/voxelization in order to approximate the signed distance (hence why you don’t see any controls for voxel spacing distance, etc.). All (read: most) of the quantities output by the NearestPoint node are computed as part of the process of finding the closest point, therefore the overhead of exposing them is minimal.
I don’t really understand what you are getting at here.