Design Intent

I like the potter's wheel approach, but I can't re-use the model dimensions in my drawings. That's ok for me, because my design intent dimensions would be very difficult for the guys in the shop to use.

If it makes more sense for you to re-use the model dimensions, try for the manufacturing approach. This could save you some time making drawings, and whatever inspection you have would be a better match to your design intent.

I don't think it matters, but you'll eventually develop a habit anyway. This will come in handy, as you will usually know where to expect your sketches to be. In my experience though, it's more useful to generally have your default planes in a similar orientation throughout the assembly to aid in mating, etc. Then you would sketch on whatever plane makes sense for the feature, with your habitual preference ruling after that.

If your shafts are all very similar I would suggest making a template of a finished shaft and using this shaft template instead of reinventing the wheel every time a new shaft comes along. This way you will save alot of time since all the surfaces will have the same internal ID no matter which shaft you are working with. This will aid in swapping out one shaft for another in an assembly (Replace Components), and if you copy a drawing of another shaft and replace references to the new shaft before opening all (or atleast most) of your dimensions should update to the new shaft. Also in creating the shaft there will be less thinking involved just edit the dims of the features that need to change.

Corey

To add to Corey's reply. A design table may also be helpful. Rather than clicking the features and changing the dimensions there you could enter your dimensions in to the excell table and the part would update and create configurations automatically.

For what its worth, I always use the FRONT plane as a basis for my models if only because it uses the same XYZ as those of a 3d sketch; therefore it does not require any transformations if/when I ever have to extract data from the model....