I've played this game about 100 hours now and I just learned that you can rotate, slide and lift objects while in workshop mode. Holy Carp! I must have wasted hours upon hours trying to meticulously manipulate beds, fences, walls and other whatnot from bizarre and cumbersome perspectives. On a controller, while an object is selected in workshop mode the left and right triggers rotate the object (aim and bash). If you hold the 'A' button (I guess that wold be the 'E' key on the keyboard), while the object is selected, the left stick (direction keys) will slide the object side to side or front to back. The right stick (the mouse?) will actually lift or drop the object - though this doesn't seem to work with every object or every time.
I hadn't a clue this could be done. Did anyone else know about this?