Grasping the pasta-sauce connection is one of the keys to a fundamental understanding of pasta dishes. Pairing an angel hair pasta with a cream sauce will result in a gloppy mess, while putting rigatoni with a light tomato sauce will leave you with a pasta that dominates its sauce instead of forming a partnership. Its best to sauce the pasta before its plated, either in the pan in which the sauce was made, or in a seperate bowl, this will ensure complete incorporation of the sauce and will allow the starch from the pasta to lend a little body to the sauce. It should also be noted that cream sauces are at their best when combined with a fresh pasta, since the cream needs to be absorbed. If you use a dry pasta with a cream sauce take care to give the pasta a good bit of time in the pan with the sauce. Tangentially, when ordering penne in Italy, be sure to pronounce it like "pen-nay" as ordering it as simply "penee" means you're ordering a nice steaming dish of penis.
Shaped pastas work very well with many different types of sauces. However, a very chunky sauce, such as a Farfalle Pasta With Wild Mushrooms, is best suited for a shaped pasta. These shapes have lots of lovely nooks and cranies with which to capture the pieces of meat or vegetable.
Tube shaped pastas go well with sauces that are thick or chunky, like pasta with broccoli and red pepper. Keep the size of the ingredients in mind: some smaller shapes won't hold the ingredients, others may be too big for a simple sauce. I like ridged pastas a lot because their texture gives the sauce lots of surface area to cling to.
Well that leaves us with the long noodle pastas. These pastas have a great amount of surface area and therefore are best partnered with an olive oil based sauce. The oil serves to keep the pasta unctuous and does not overwhelm the pasta. A thicker noodle, such as fettuccine, stands up to a cream sauce or a ragu, while the thinner strands are best with a lighter and thinner sauce such as tomato vodka cream sauce.
mkb says we say GRAVY not SAUCE and we viciously dress down anyone who dares cross us. *roar*
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