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.
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.