Issue with origin point, orientation and exact movements

Question

This issue is in 3.2.0.

I looked around and already solved part of the problem I have with the origin point (setting origin to geometry, to centre of mass, to 3D cursor,etc.) and I know that applying scale/rotation/location designates the current values of an object to be its zero values. But one issue I have remains and it's kind of this: Normals. I have these poles here that are beams of a roof and I want to be able to elongate them as I wish, but with the current rotation of the colourful gizmo there, I can only stretch them according to the world axis, not the object axis. Somehow, one of those poles DOES have its gizmo orient accordingly. I believe that orientation is called "normal" and I put every little dropdown menu and option I could find to "normal" but it doesn't work. And tying into that: I wish to be able to move/scale/rotate an object so that certain vertices/edges/faces meet specific criteria, like parallel or orthogonal to another object's vertices/edges/faces or to general world axis. In this example, I'd like to select a side and then rotate the object so that that side orient perfectly 90° up for example, so I can then apply transforms of the object. Basically, I want to make the pole stand up straight or lie down flat as I need it. So far, I have to eyeball it, as even the incremental movements when holding down CTRL is not aligned to world axis but always crooked/off by a few degrees. I hope my descriptions are clear enough.

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Thanks for the tip with the radial array, Jakemoyo, I am always looking for ways to do stuff faster, but the normal lines, the little teal lines, were not what I was talking about. I was talking about this: I just figured out by chance that the scaling option aligns to the objects itself only when the scaling option is picked on the left-hand side, not when pressing S or when using the "transform" gizmo. But once rotation is applied, I don't know how to get it back unless I manually re-align the object to the global axis. So my question remains: is there a way to set an alignment of a specific face or edge so i can reacquire the non-applied rotation? I also want to know this for cases when I want to make sure two objects properly align or are level/parallel on two of their faces, for example, like these AREN'T in this image.

Answer 1

When you're in Edit Mode, "Normal" means oriented around whichever direction the faces are pointed, with Z being directly orthogonal to the plane of the face.

You can actually see this by enabling Face Normals in the Overlay menu.

Something like this:

In object mode it does the same thing as Local transform orientation.

I think the difference you are thinking of is between Global and Local orientation. And maybe you have a few misconceptions about applying rotation that might contribute to this.

Global just means always oriented this exact way. It will never change.

Local means rotate or move and object according to an objects default state. When you apply rotation or scale you are basically saying, "However my object is transformed now, make that be the default" essentially aligning it with Global transforms.

This is essentially how you could conceptualize the different states of Global/Local Transforms.

If you keep your transform orientation in Global then it will automatically toggle local transforms when you double tap the transform axis key.

It seems like your problem is coming from applying the rotation of your object when you don't actually mean to.

Additionally there is probably a better way to do this kind of thing than just manually duplicating each object and rotating it into position.

A radial array is the oldest trick in the book. There are also other ways.