Personally, I wouldn't zero the setting - although it shouldn't affect much.  Conforming figures will compensate and poses will be off so slightly as to be unnoticable.

Basically, Orientation determines the default (when the rotate dials are zero) axial system about which the body part will rotate.  For instance, if you set the Orientation xrot to 90d note the effect that it has on the rotation dials.  The thing that I abhor about Poser is that it only shows the Origin/Endpoint for the joint - the orientation can be very ambiguous.  So you change the orientation and there is no visual cue to show the new rotation system.  Well, it does, but orthogonal changes (90d/180d/270d) are indistinguishable because the cross-hairs are not shown axis-specific.

Align is sort of mysterious.  The manual says this:

Clicking the Align button aligns the joint with its underylying body part or group.

"Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" puts it this way:

The "Align" button is a sort of auto-rotator.  If you move the cross-hairs around so they are no longer lined up, you can press this buttin to have them point at each other

So, basically, if you change the Origin/Endpoint of the body part, this button will fix the orientation so that the angles represent a vector from the Origin to the Endpoint (if you understand that).

Robert

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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