Help with PLL Orientation

[TheRealWillB]

I'm pretty new to cubing (2-3 months or so) and have recently learned CFOP. I am averaging 35-45 seconds with intuitive F2L (not very good yet), 2-look OLL, and have most of the PLL algorithms memorized. I see in videos and other people's solves that they do not cube rotate when they get to the PLL step; however, I always have to to get my cube in the right position. I feel like cube rotations alone are taking up a lot of time, and I can't figure out how to do it.

 

[AlphaSheep]

There are actually three parts to this.

1. AUF (adjust upper face) rather than rotate - This is easy because you can start doing it straight away. Your fingers are already positioned to turn the top face, but rotating the cube requires a regrip, which means you have to reposition your fingers before you start turning again.
2. Two sided PLL recognition - This takes a little practice, but you can recognise any PLL from only two sides. This cuts out unnecessary turns while recognising. Search for a two sided recognition guide and have see if it appeals to you.
3. Learn multiple algs for different angles - This is obviously the most work and only a few cubers actually go through with it completely. Rather than learning 4 algs for every PLL, I recommend learning just a second alg to avoid doing U2 alg U2. Start with the U-perm because it's the easiest.

 

[Rpotts]

Welcome to SpeedSolving! You've got a pretty good start if you're averaging ~40 seconds after only a couple months, nice work. To answer your question most people don't rotate their cubes before PLL and instead simply do a U, U', or U2 turn to Adjust the U Face (AUF) to the angle they need for the PLL they have.

For example, take your cube and do U2 R U R' F' R U R' U' R' F R2 U' R' which is U2 then the standard J perm alg. What I'm assuming you'd do in this case is U y2 to "get your cube in the right position" then do J perm. However, instead of rotating what you can do is U' to position the last layer, then do J perm, then U to "AUF". This is what most people switch to as they get faster.

This is sort of hard to grasp when you're first learning, I certainly did what you're describing when I was first learning PLL and even still sometimes do in certain cases. The important part to take away from this is you don't need to align the blocks you use to recognize PLLs with their sides; learning to recognize them simply by looking at the last layer can take some time but will ultimately help you get faster in the long run.