Planning Builds on Survival

I'm curious as to how my other Survival builders go about planning their builds, or if they just kind of see what happens.

I've done a few base builds now, and am gearing up to establish a permanent* base on a plains island after we beat Moder this weekend. Some of the planning I can do from experience (I've set up cooking stations a few times, to say the least), and will break out graph paper for layout, but that misses the vital 3D aspect that I want to have fun with on this build. If I get super detailed with it, I might break out Sketchup for a 3D layout, but that might be more work than it's worth, even if I'm fast with it.

If it's relevant, we/I don't use any mods that affect building (if it's not relevant, we still don't). I've used some in single-player, but like the more vanilla experience on a shared server.

So I was curious what you all out there do for planning!

*permanent until I decide I want to move somewhere else for the lolz