Plug-ins to speed up work and not having to redo redundant tasks.
Add suffixes to objects in the scene so they can be identified without looking at the outliner.
Renaming nodes: It can confuse Maya when more complex connections are made between nodes. Use the object rename tool to rename the child nodes so everything in the scene has a unique name. Nodes on the same level of the hierarchy can't have the same name. It's a bad idea for the child nodes to have the same name.
A procedural geometry generator to create variation in gears by specifying parameters, such as the number of spokes.