Hey Michael,
yes you are correct.
the only specific is that I got great results with
either triangles only or quads and triangles.

With Welding on, the imported obj to the converter "transporter" comes in spikey.

With Welding off, the imported obj to Transporter comes in clean and smooth and
is saved to fact format which comes into EI clean and smooth.
All surfacing settings were deactivited in Transporter, then save as fact.

Mike

Here is a screen cap from EI.