Yes I think arrangemonk must be joking, that was a method used in the '90s and it was really error-prone and slow! Personally I do it all with Max's Relax, hotkeyed maxscripts for aligning horizontal/vertical based off Chuggnut's scripts, and eyeballing it all.
For some projects I have 2 sometimes 3 sets of UV's. 1) Auto unwrap, every poly in its own space often a nightmare. 2) Artist Friendly UV's often broken across several templates so the pieces are easy to paint and easy to understand. 3) Final optimized UV's, often a chaotic nightmare but very engine friendly. Final maps…