Best practice for modeling buttons or other small objects/attachments to the jacket?

posted to: Shaping Pieces

Hey!  I have a question regarding modeling small objects and attaching them to larger objects.  For example, in this course, how should I go about modeling buttons and attaching them to the jacket?  Should I model a separate object for the buttons, then use surface snapping to attach them to the jacket?  Or should I just model the buttons and manually place them right on top of the jacket mesh (maybe even allow them to intersect the jacket mesh, a little)??  And then after that, should I join (CTRL+J) the objects together?

I just would like to know what the typical/best practice is for placing smaller objects/attachments on to larger objects. 

Thanks!