Alignment questions

[micheus]

I believe you would have simplified your process if you (even moving as you did) have put the "part1" on its final location.

This statement confuses me greatly. As I understand it, I agree that putting part 1 in the final location would have made this much easier. But then I wouldn't have needed to ask how to put it where I wanted?

That's true. It was just a comment.

The shell extrude puzzles me. I know how to do it, but I would never have thought to.
...
Also, I don't understand the difference between "extrude" and "shell extrude".

In short: it does the same as Extrude, BUT it creates a separated object (that you can easily throw away )

I didn't realize that the snap required a face for it's destination. That became a stumbling block for me.

It doesn't. You will see many situations in which you need to define a axis for direction and you can get it from a vertex's normal, edge (and you have the option to pick its normal by hitting [1] - see information line - in the right side) and face's normal.
For a group of elements (vertex,edges,faces) it will use the average normal among the elements)

The documentation should really say what the difference is by comparison.

the documentation isn't good, is true.

Now that I know about multiple parameters per choice, I merely have to find out what they are, how to select them, and in what order they belong.

Most the time they will be used to define references and axis. In this case, try to "visualise" how do would like your "controller" (as in other apps) was positioned, rotated.

Just as a sample of how you must understand them, take a look at the image in this link. It's related to the way we pick the parameters for an "complex" rotation+alignment in a plugin I made.

I can't watch videos. My only internet is a phone and I have limited data (yes, we exist). So I read. And test. And break stuff, and read some more.

I see. Unfortunately we don't have a good documentation that you could download, except by the Wings User Manual and oort's The Wings3D Handbook (both in .pdf) - they are a bit old, but still valid most cases.