Using the recast based automatic generation (Watch Bethesda's navmeshing tutorial) actually works really well with a relatively flat exterior cell. I have a lot of fairly normal forested areas that I can generate recast, then spend a few moments quickly cleaning up and I'm done. As opposed to spending probably 15-30+ minutes hand navmeshing it. However super detailed exteriors usually just get really messy, so it takes longer to clean up, but can still usually be faster than doing by hand from scratch.