Led cube efficiency

Like this

But how you wire it up (be it 2D or 3D), is ofc up to you. One thing to keep in mind is that if you use row/column scanning in your 8x8x8 cube, it could be rather dim. Because each row (or column) would be on for 1/64th of a frame time, as there are 64 rows (of 8 LED's) total.