"There is certainly little hope of that if a mesh cannot be created without tris. But I have not put forward an expectation of such."

There is an option to output quads and ngons. Not a triangle in sight.

Why sub-d a mesh created from nurbs? Sub-d is to create the kind of curved surfaces that are already in the nurbs model.

This thread has me baffled. The only reason to use all quads is if you are doing character animation and skinning and need to control where the bends in the mesh occur. Even then triangles usually work if they are in the right place.

Nurbs modelling is not the tool to use to create character skins.