Juan,
welcome to the HANA world. you should use calculation views for your models going fwd. If you are having to create tables in HANA, I would suggest to look into CDS. Creating tables via CDS you are able to create design time objects which in turn create runtime tables. The reason why you should use CDS for tables is because when you transport these CDS files all you will need to do in the upstream environments would be activate your design time objects.
HANA live is in fact maily calc views. One best practice advise is to not mix engines when doing HANA modeling... so a calc view should be faster than having an attribute / analytical / calc mix scenario ** in most cases.
CDS has been gaining popularity because it allows you to do some modeling as well but for less complex scenarios. calc views will optimize themselves and they also allow you to visualize the way they get executed as you will be able to use the graphical editor to create your models. also you can drag/drop tables/views from other schemas (granted you have permissions)
hope this is a good beginning in your HANA modeling