How to orient local rotation axis to workplane or component?

Hello.
Being a new NVil user who is testing it before making a purchase, I have found myself with some questions that I hope will find their answers here.
So far, after working with NVil for two days I must say I'm very impressed with its capabilities as a pure SubDiv modeling application.
What I can't figure out though is how to align a local rotation axis of one object (or its component) to either:
- a workplane
- or normal vector of face or edge of a second object.
I think I've gone through all tools available but cant find the appropriate command to accomplish that, so I'll be grateful for any help in this matter.
I'm attaching an image that hopefully will shed some more light on what I want to accomplish.

so your trying to orient Cube 1 to the workplane like cube 2?

im still looking for a better method, but a quick and dirty way would be to go into workplane edit mode in rotation mode, and copy the values from it to the rotation values for the cube.

but im sure there has to be a better way, and if i cant find a better way i will make a feature request.

sorry i cant help much more but i dont use the workplane that often.

alright found 1 way to do it, open the transform list window (view > windows > transform list), click save workplane transform, than select your object and hit perform aligning.

and your done.

you can also use this to save tranforms of objects and componets.

the workplane tab will interst you too since you can save multiple workplane settings.

Perfect!
Thank you. It's just what I was looking for and it doesn't even involve workplanes! 

Hi rubberDuck,

First, please look in the help file:- "Help-> Contents-> Modeling-> Object Manipulation". That will show the basics for manipulator setting.

For setting the object manipulator to grid, you can follow the help file instructions, then use the grid snapping to set object manipulator to grid orientation/position.(as example)

There are also some advanced options, but they need an hotkey (for a streamline tool) to be set up.

If you first look at the help file, see if that helps, if not, I will post some examples and how to use the streamline tool for this.

Hi Steve and thanks for your reply as well.
Yeah, I should have looked it up in the help file first. It seems the process is described there pretty nicely.
Streamline tools are something I'll be investigating next.

Hi rubberDuck,

For the "set manipulator" streamline tool, it only requires an hotkey to be set (Or for it to be shown in the smartips or radial menu or, even a custom tool_bar.  It depends on how you are setting the UI)

To set an hotkey. Go to "Edit-> Customize-> Streamline Tools". In the popup window, look down the list of streamline engine tools, you will find "Set Manipulator". Select it, then at the top, click on "Set Hotkey".
Once the hotkey is set-up. pressing that hotkey will invoke that streamline tool. By default, the instant help will show and explains the various mouse-clicks you can use to set the manipulator. The advantage of that streamline tool over the basic "Set", is that you can also use remote snap points to control the orientation of the manipulator.