Subdivision modifier with smoothing groups option
Unlike normal subdivision method where every corner of the mesh gets rounded on applying subdivision modifier. it will be helpful if blender ignore subdivision of areas based upon auto-smooth option. just like blender smooth object based upon Auto-smooth angle. I have used 3ds max before and there it has option in subdivision modifier as "smoothing groups" which preserve hard edges. it is very helpful to make hard surface and remain the mesh low poly for flexible editing and also utilizing sub-div modifier. youtu.be/UW7xsDEAVuc
In this video of 3ds max turbosmooth/subdiv modifier, there is option separate by "Smoothing group" which is similar to blender shade flat/smooth either by auto-smooth angle or manually smoothing selected face shade/flat.
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Blender doesn't have smoothing groups and there's no point in implementing them AFIAK.
However, there were discussions about implementing vertex groups into the Subdivision modifier, such as here:
vertex groups in the subd modifier would be great - i'd love to be able to control where on my mesh the subdivision could occur
why is there no point in implementing them in blender? Are they superseded by other features?
Because they are an old way to manage flat and smooth surface in a time when only wireframe was possible to display for working, you were lucky to even have 12fps, and a single SD frame with solid surfaces without textures took a day to render.
It worked really well for the time because Instead of having to calculate and store accurate vertex normals for each vertex like today: just have X amount of virtual planes, assign your geometry to these planes, and they inherit their normals. There was a time when the amount of max smoothing groups was a selling argument for softwares. I think 3DS Max pushed up the max amount of groups to 32.
Some tools that could use a form of area of effect made use of that because it was already there. You could use smoothing groups for rigging too. But nowadays:
Sofware and hardware are way over that kind of issues, we use vertex normals and even deform it in real time with millions of polygons, and shader normals on top. If you need a form of area of effect: vertex group do it better. You can have as many as you want, you can have multiploe of them on the same vertices, and with intensities, and names, and it's a standard everywhere since decades.