Does anyone know a way in Houdini to keep my sharp edges with and FBX import from Softimage, but not "cusp" or cut the edges so I end up with separate poly islands ? It messes up the geometry and the point count. [apksprofree.com]

Thanks,
regard apksprofree

Just append a normal sop. In vertex mode it should generate the normals as you would expect.

Have a look here:
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/sop/normal.html [www.sidefx.com]

Make sure that Softimage is exporting proper vertex normals. When you middle mouse on your import node to bring up the info window, you should be seeing N as a vertex attribute.