>>Additionally with CAD model imports, the vertex normals are very accurate because they come from the original CAD data. Things like a part with a sphere in it will have the exact vertex normal from the original sphere surface, etc... There's no way for something that cooks up normals just by averaging already faceted data to come up with the precise original normals like that.<<

What?

The problems with smoothing of exported meshes from "nurbs surface->mesh" exporters is due to the bad topology, mainly around the boundary's of joined curved surfaces. If you export a sphere from MOI then render it with vertex normal info or with smoothing, then you would have to guess which was which, as there is no difference due to poly flow. It is the same with the model I showed sliced up. If I render that with vertex normal info or smoothing, the results are the same.

What vertex normal info is good for, is hiding the bad topology/ bad poly flow output from the conversion.