Object coordinates in Blender

I gave up on XSI and switched to Blender. And boy is it complicated. :heee: I'm doing pretty much every beginner's tutorial I can get my hands on but there are these teeny weeny problems you don't find an answer for because it seems to be way to obvious for the tutorial writers - or you don't really know what to search for. So...

When I create an object, for example a cylinder, and I want to make it exactly 8x8 units wide and 1 unit high then when I use the "Transform Properties" window (N) and enter the values it's somtimes all wrong. I mean I enter 0 in the coordinates and suddenly the cylinder is far away. Or I enter 8 for the x and y axis but it scales the z axis instead. Can I somehow reset the coordinates for an object? It seems to alway use some weird local object-specific coordinates instead of placing it globally.

Any Blender people around?

I don't use blender, but the directions may be relative, and you might be able to see them by using whatever move tool you have.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

After hours of despair I figured that if you scale an object in "Object mode" the scales won't be used by the exporter. If you scale the faces in "Edit mode" howevere (with the same result) it works nicely. One problem solved, a hundered to go.