got no idea about 3dsmax, even though Any decent modeling package must have angle based edge selection options somewhere. Blender offers best built in tools for selections as far as I experienced, shift+g menu in blender has any kind of selection options imaginable. For Modo there's selection scripts by seneca for angle…
I use tools to select edges by angle or coplanrity then just remove them. sometimes this technique can be a bit too much destructive for support loops on low poly to prevent projection skewing (possible to circumvent it by using skewmeshes in some cases) still though most of times it does the trick and saves me from hassle…
+1 for detailed blockout which becomes both high and lowpoly. Also great for making sure you get proportions right before moving onto the sub-d stuff. Another thing I tried recently is saving all the edges of the blockout into a selection set (modo). Then after you're done adding loops to make your sub-d mesh, you…