For me, the sections that takes the least amount of time to the most amount of time are:
angles < cube counting < hole punching< key holes < pattern folding < TFE
The reason why angles should take the least amount of time is pretty obvious (although I took a little more time to discern between small angles on the real DAT vs. Kaplan's).
Cube counting should be fast as well as long as you are capable of visualizing faces of cubes. Make a chart of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and etch down a mark for all the cube's faces before answering the questions. I saved time by not adding up the total etches and counting the total amount of blocks but you can include this step if you are unsure of your accuracy. In essence, total counting time should take no more than 1.5-2.5 minutes and you get to answer 2-3 questions in 8 more seconds with relatively high accuracy!
Hole punching I think is less time consuming than the others because you don't have to look at all the choices and eliminate them one by one as you would for keyhole and pattern folding. Learn to visualize the folding, remember where holes would be and then finding the correct answer. It may not come naturally for a lot of people but it'll cut you a lot of time for the more time consuming sections.
Pattern folding: I don't think there are any special tricks to this section. I try to fold the object at hand into the answer choices one by one. Sometimes I get it right on my first try, sometimes I don't but if you can learn to look for special shapes and shadings (including what's adjacent, what's across from it) you should be able to blaze through this section pretty fast and still keeping accuracy. After all, if you can fold it into the shape then it must be the right answer!
Keyholes: This section is my personal favorite but it is also the section where I get most wrong from (though I am still convinced that kaplan practice questions have a lot of answers that are wrong!). I'm not sure what crack the PAT has in it, but Kaplan I found was good enough to prepare you for the real thing (it's actually easier than kaplan). For this section, it takes more time to go through if you want to maintain accuracy since you must go through each answer choice. Learn to manipulate the shape in your head and try to fit the object through each one of the answer choices. As the great Sherlock Holmes once said, "once you've eliminated the impossible, the remaining choices no matter how improbable must be the truth!" Same idea here, eliminate what is impossible and you'll often arrive at the right answer (whether you see it fit through or not).
Lastly, TFE: I'm not sure what strategy is best used here. Kaplan teaches line counting but it really didn't come in very handy on the real thing. On the real thing, I can generally narrow the answers down to one or two that would require more detailed examination to arrive at the right answer. Once I narrow it down to 2, I look for the differences between the two choices and find the first discrepancy that will inevitably lead me to the right answer. Again, the key here is to be able to visualize the object. I won't lie, I think I'm pretty good at visualizing folding and 3-D objects but I am actually quite terrible at converting a 2-D image to a 3-D one (especially when I'd see it as popping out when it is actually popping in). However, if you can rotate the object just from front to top then top to side, you can often reason out which should be a dashed line and which should be solid!
Hope that helps, I typed up a storm!
Edit: P.S. I had around 12 minutes leftover from my PA section on the real DAT. I used the time to double check my cube counting (yes, I counted every single cube stack and re-answered all the questions) and double checked my pattern folding and angles as I thought those were my strongest sections and I didn't want to miss a question that should be impossible to miss if you count right (cube counting). I decided to check my cube counting because I doubted myself but I actually shouldn't have because the sections I revisited were all correct up to my knowledge. I think on the real thing I probably missed a couple of hole punching because I blazed through those pretty quick :/
