A couple things I have noticed using Perfect Layout for a while now.  First I consider it essential. It makes things so much quicker and better looking with little to no effort on my part. Let Finale put stuff where it wants to. Can you do this in Finale yourself, of course you can, but PL does it with a simple click.

Basically I use the default settings. The two areas where I differ is on measure numbers and triplets.  I turn off all triplet settings completely.

The two things I see as very important are making sure you have enough space on your page. In fact if you don't leave enough room, PL will tell you that is can't do its thing because insufficient space. Second, PL still seems to put the first measure number in the wrong place to my liking anyway. Perhaps it is a setting I am over looking. PL has a lot of custom settings you can change. 

Remember you can always tweak things after you run PL and you can run PL again if you do need to or want to make some edits.

That brings up a point, MM sees fit to include and even help with JW Plug-ins and Patterson and TG Tools but fails to see the impact Perfect Layout would have on Finale users. As far as I know Dorico and Sibelius can't do what PL does for Finale. Now perhaps Jan Angermüller will port his PL over to those softwares, who knows. Sibelius "magnetic layout" whatever thing they have or call it is a joke compared to PL.

I always run Patterson beams first but this is how PL did this score with the default settings.