Yes, CTRL+A is what I meant. Thank you for responding. Okay, also I'll stop applying both unless needed. Thank you for that information.
It has to do with the Coordinate Systems in which the Objects exist.
But you can think of it like this: (the following is all done in Object Mode!) if you Move a default Cube, it will still be the same default Cube. If you Rotate it, it will still be the same default Cube. But if you Scale it, it will look different, bigger, smaller or not even be a cube anymore. Although the Positions of the Vertices are still the same (plus or minus 1 in X, Y and Z). Scaling is the only Transform, that changes how the default Cube looks and that is therefore the only one that needs to be Applied.
I did not think of it in that way. Thank you for putting my feet on a better path.
Hey Wayne, I think you mean Alt S and Alt R
Yes they will reset the Scale and Rotation (Alt G will reset the location)
You would use these all the time when animating an armature, because it will be in Pose Space - not so much when animating objects because they will be in World Space.
You don't need Alt A, or Ctrl A for animation.
Alt A is for deselecting everything.....ok so you might use that.
But Ctrl A is for applying stuff....and no, don't do that unless you want to break your animation ;)
General rule of thumb... move (grab) and rotate in Object mode and scale in edit mode.... The only time to rotate in edit mode is if you want to keep the original origin but want to rotate part of your object. I only apply rotation on an object if I want that object to have the new rotation for a Z up. (In which case, I'd probably have rotated it in edit mode). By rotating in object mode (without applying), it keeps its local XYZ orientation and can still be moved along this local orientation. But say you rotate an object 45 degrees on the X axis and apply it (or do the rotation in edit mode), the local XYZ orientation is now changed, so moving along the local Z axis might not necessarily go along the object's (local) top and bottom directions.
Scaling in edit mode rather than object mode keeps the object's scale at 1:1:1.