When I did fly my usual procedure was to hand fly the aircraft to 10,000ft and then engage the auto-pilot, the only exceptions would be in an extremely high traffic area where it was best to have all the eyeballs looking out of the cockpit, then I would engage the autopilot, but keep my hand on the yoke and the other hand on the throttles.
Same on decent, autopilot until 10,000ft, then hand fly to landing. VMC/IMC makes no difference.
But then again I'm an old fart.
Oh, there was one aircraft that I hand flew all the time except cruise, that was the early Lear 23/24s, those autopilots were terrible.