Best technique for laying out a JPanel with sub panels...

Question

Okay, you're probably going to think this is a nit-picky question, but I seem to do it different each time I have to solve this problem, and neither of them feels like they're obviously the "right" way to do things, so I'm asking for how you all do them.
Suppose I'm making a panel that's going to have several other panels on it. For example, let's say that the main JPanel is going to use BorderLayout and then there's going to be a sub-panel with a bunch of radiobuttons.. and another with some textboxes, and another with some jbuttons, etc.
There are a few ways you can do it:
Method #1
1 Instantiate main JPanel
2 Instantiate a sub-panel
3 add() the sub-panel to the main (before it has anything)
4 Populate the sub-panel with compnents
5 Repeat 2-4 for all other sub-panels
Method #2
1 Instatiate main JPanel
2 Instantiate a sub-panel
3 add() it to the main panel
4 repeat 2-3 for all sub-panels
5 populate the first sub-panel with components
6 Repeat #5 for all sub-panels
Method #3
1 Instantiate a sub-panel
2 Populate the sub-panel with components
3 Repeat 1-2 for all sub-panels
4 Instantiate main JPanel
5 Add populated sub-panel to main JPanel
6 Repeat #5 for all sub-panels
Method #4 (same as Method #1 except #3 and #4 are switched)
1 Instantiate main JPanel
2 Instantiate a sub-panel
3 Populate the sub-panel with components
4 add() populated sub-panel to main panel
5 repeat 2-4 for all sub-panels
They'll all work just fine when you initially write them. What I'm after is the one which:
1) Is the most readable later, and
2) Is easiest to make changes to if you want to change the way your overall panel looks (ie, least chance of having something go wrong because you didn't realize that you need to make a change in two different places in the code instead of one, etc).
Of these methods, do any of them strike you as either "Sure, that's the only way to really do it!" or "Oh man, if you did it *that* way, you're in for major headaches"?
Thanks in advance,
- Joe

Answer 1

Well, my code generally would look something like this:
add(createToolBar(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
add(createApplicationPanel(), BorderLayout.CENTER);
add(createStatusBar(), BorderLayout.SOUTH);The createApplicationPanel might then be broken down into sub methods depending on the complexity of the application.
So I guess that would be your method 4.
The key point to remember is that you want create and add all the components and panels BEFORE you do your frame.pack() and frame.setVisible(), then you shouldn't have any layout problems.