Well that's not the answer I wanted to hear.. but thx.

Guessing the above reasons are why I was steered away from Subd?

It's just I saw someone (in a vid.. somewhere) using hierarchal editing to insert nice round indents into a face... (many noobs as you know dream of this) and they did it without up rezzing the entire mesh or ending up with copious edges to 'tie off' in order to avoid dreaded Ngons. ( My models often contract terminal Ngon/Pole-itis )

Small thing but it made me reflect that Id seen Subd before and over the years never used it... hoped it was the missing tool from my bag of tricks... Then when I followed link to link and ended with a Pixar open sub-d vid I was all - "Woot"

Oh well - Thx again.