Great explanation @tomasplasil I think frosty_beard’s issue was that he wanted to move multiple verts of vary-ing normal’s along that normal of the plank.
In this example, with a simple object like a plank being oriented the same as the global/local axis, your explanation works great!
But on a much more complex geometry the local axis option may not work for everything like on a face that is not necessarily in one of the local axis directions like on my low poly sphere, which is where the custom Orientation Option would probably come in more handy. Then you don’t necessarily have to worry about object versus edit rotation, you can just make a custom orientation for what you need and go back.
Don’t get me wrong though. Having proper rotation in object/edit mode planned out should not be neglected for certain modeling workflows.
