I recall that one of the LeoCAD-style brick based editors had an option to remove all the top and bottom connection features for export to .OBJ or similar, simplifying the shapes to boxes but reducing the poly count enormously.
Was that something LeoCAD could do or would I need to use a different tool for that? (This wasn't a general purpose hidden surface removal, it was just removing all of the parts of the bricks associated with ensuring physical connections)
To answer my own question: the program was LdrDat2Obj[0] and it had an option to ignore stud.dat references inside brick definitions when exporting designs to .obj (you'll still be carrying all the weight of the unseen internal connection shapes but it still represents a pretty huge poly savings to exclude the top studs on export)
Was that something LeoCAD could do or would I need to use a different tool for that? (This wasn't a general purpose hidden surface removal, it was just removing all of the parts of the bricks associated with ensuring physical connections)