The plug in is called Power SubD and honestly there’s nothing else quite like it in industry in terms of pre-defining edges on a SubD model so that when converted to NURBS you can pick said edges and continue and CAD operations required.
[/quote]But what you also need to be aware of is that converted SubDs are not “clean” or “perfect” at all and quite the opposite of single span Class A modelling. The math of these surfaces is REALLY heavy. Yes, you can thicken them, etc. But it sounds much more useful than it is in reality cause they are so friggin overdefined and complicated that they break at every chance they get when you start building upon them and do things that go beyond a simple thicken of the surface. The SubDs can be a quick solution and sometimes are the easiest way out of a problem, but they are usually always the least elegant solution…[/quote]
If at all possible to show some examples of SubD that you’d consider not clean or perfect. I’m not necessarily disputing what you’ve experience just saying that there are possible ways to have bad NURBS geometry for a whole host of reasons. There are a fair amount of car companies using zBrush, Modo…etc as part of their design process. Not saying it’s the end geometry used but this notion of “class A” being this be all end all is also kind of urban myth that people throw around with really thinking about what’s really behind it. This could mean it was done in Rhino, SW, IV…etc. And when you say that SubD’s are heavy, one that that you can do with mesh geometry that NURBS can’t is actually decimate and reduce the heaviness. With NURBS you really can’t do this… you can try to rebuild it, yes, but that’s about it. It’d be great if there were a shrink wrap feature for NURBS surfaces but alas…