That is the way I do it with our current little dome tent, it only has two poles. But we used to have a geodome that had about six poles, all the same length, and all of the sleeves (as well as the entire tent) were the same dark blue color. Just figuring out what sleeve to push what pole thru was a nightmare. I finally got smart and color coded the sleeves by stitching both ends of each one with bright orange thread. One big stich, first pole, two big stitches...well, you get the idea. Then came the actual part of flexing the poles to stand the thing up. I could do it by myself, but it was a lot of work. Then I got smarter and got rid of that sucker...