getting the sword in the hand: You are right, I usually use the trans dials to move things around myself. Posing the hand: You will have to move the fingers to where they will need to be. A good starting point is to open your Hands library and look for the Grasp hand. Use that to start. To keep the sword in the hand: Select the sword and go to the object menu and parent it to the proper hand. To kepp the hand pose: You can't be sure it won't change in a pose. The best thing to do here is once you get your hand posed right then you can add it to your hands library. This way if it is changed by a pose all you will have to do is reload that hand and you instantly have it back.