While showing how to create a car tire using modo, Yazan Malkosh from 9b Studios demonstrates the use of deformers and arrays providing some great flexibility for modeling complex shapes.
Freezing deformers in polygon mode to apply those deformations which provide a great live editing mode when modeling
Yazan notes that you are able to get a great live editing mode when modeling by freezing deformers in polygon mode, applying the deformations to the model which is, in this example a tire, but the Yazan mentions that this technique can be used for anything really.