I would never lace up wheels as shown in Sheldons guide.
Stand up to insert the spokes and sit down to tension and true. In Europe the spokes from the inside of the flange were always inserted in opposite directions, if countersinks and rim angle and stagger allowed.
In the mid 50's I saw both BSA and Hercules factory wheel building.
BSA had 2 ladies lacing up, and one man tensioning and trueing. They were building standard heavy steel (32 ounce rims), the lace up was 2.5 minutes, and the true and tension had to be half of that, close to 50 wheels an hour.
The Hercules about the same. The best I could do was about 3 mins.