i do it the same way as you rege except
I have been using a line to start with then duplicating the line and rotating it with the shift key

yours is a much more economical way of doing it and also I can see what my symbol sections will look like at a glance
I will be using the star method from now on
another thing I do after this step
I select all but the top symbol in my layers pane
and group them then I apply the lock to the group
this leaves the top symbol that I can open and play with ..... it makes it less chaotic ( for me )