I only use P-variables for absolute moves when I am calculating positions, like palletizing.
The insert + enter is a quick way to teach the path special in the welding application.
The position variable use usually to save position and use it in calculations, or you have a camera and need data send to robot and save in a position variable.
Depends on the your application, you can decide which method needs to use but insert+enter is normal method.
80-90% of all my robots are programed with standard (insert+enter) move types.
We use PVAR on model specific positions where a common job is running for every model, but some positions are exclusive and we call a PVAR with a integer pointer.
i weld ibeams and i use a pvar for my safe position when moving from side to side and the rest of the job is the (insert+enter) moves
I do mostly press line transfer/machine tending jobs or pick and place assembly type jobs and use pvars almost exclusively because my cells usually need less than 100 positions total and the pvars are easy to read, edit and name. Not saying that’s the best way, just how the company I work at does it.
... I find that I go through all the available position variable rather quickly.
Also If you are running out of stock pvars and you have a YRC1000 controller you may want to look into expanding the variable memory allocation. You can expand the global pvars up to 1600 variables. I had some help with this in a thread a while ago:
Cell with a large number of P Variables - YRC1000
How to do it is described in the YRC1000 instruction manual under variable allocation
