Cut tool -- other options?
 

Is there any way to force the cut tool to, instead of using arbitrary hand-drawn lines or cartesian planes... use actual geometry -- a single face or possibly a full discrete mesh?

Think booleans only without using the whole object -- just a couple of faces... and instead of merging the object -- just make a cut outline on one of them.

Not really sure what u mean. The cut tool just does those 2 things. For working on partial, u could mesh>extract the faces and work on them before you merge them back into the model.

Basically I want to create (an) edge(s) on a mesh at its intersection with another mesh.

That's tricky. Maybe duplicate the objects a couple of times, and play around with the intersection boolean and a difference boolean operations until u got all parts u need to make the whole again.

With nurbs u could've duplicated a curve from one object and projected it onto another.

U'd think Maya would have a function that cuts at the intersection of 2 polygon-objects without losing parts like in boolean. I came across this myself a couple of times. I think 3DS Max has this and so Discreet will surely implement this eventually in Maya too.

Its not Discreet -- its Alias still... they just give their profits to Autodesk.

Which is odd because most business ventures involve the employees going to work finding out their office's locks are changed and someone's drinking from their coffee mug o.o

if that makes u sleep better at night ....