Ally,
I always thought my mentors perhaps under thought things, i.e., locked on to putting lateral hazards at the dogleg point without much thought. Early in my solo career, I remember a criticism of a bunker placed too far out to be in play considering the headwind and uphill nature of the tee shot. Both influenced me not to take fw bunker placement for granted. Yes, if I was remodeling, i.e., a bunker reduction study, and could see where the divots were, I would use that as a general placement guide, but I do more new or total redo work (although also some bunker reductions like your recent project)
Short version is, given a German heritage, including some engineers exiled to America by the Kaiser (according to family legend, and perhaps referring to the railroad kind, as family legend is a bit fuzzy) is it much surprise that I use a more mathematical method than others as a first step in bunker placement.
I usually stick with a consistent dogleg point, but then estimate the true landing zone (carry and roll, with shorter hitters having more roll as part of total distance) from each tee for design purposes. The yard for yard estimate for uphill/downhill seems pretty well known by good players. Wind is harder to estimate, of course, but often a huge factor here in Texas.
But, I also know that average players hit their maximum distance less than half the time as well. For good players, we presume a bit more solid contact and would prefer to challenge full length but off line shots. For average players, I hate to place bunkers that punish their career length tee shot, even if off line, but also hesitate to place them for their 80-90% distance tee shots, either. And, I rarely put a bunker over say, 190-200 yards, from the green, where their semi muffs don't allow them to reach the green anyway.
Lastly, my bunker reduction projects in the last decade convince me that little used bunkers tend to go away, while multi-purpose bunkers, that catch some percentage of golfers, but not too many, but also perform other functions, i.e., target, separation, save, drainage, safety, etc. tend to be kept. That experience has led me away from any romantic ideas about random placement being any kind of worthy design theory. Yeah, fore bunkers look good to my eye, too. My experience tells me they won't last long.
For that matter, I have had to (or had) long strip angled carry bunkers removed on my courses. The powers that be just don't understand carry sand well short of the landing zone, preferring the 1970's mantra of placing them adjacent to the presumed landing zone. I have also had tour pros question why a bunker would angle in towards the fw and require a carry.
I don't like it, but don't think my clients should have to endure bunkers no one seems to like.
Changing paradigms is hard to do. Seems like many of us have tried, and maybe its just me who failed, LOL.