Here is a short script I wrote to help edit the local rotation of a joint. It was helpful to tweak joints so that bending was in positive z etc...
There may be some bugs.
Hope you find it helpful.
cheers
Nate
Before
After
import maya.cmds as cmds ##set local rotations axis to specified rotations on specified objects #@note default 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 # ## def setLocalRotationAxisOfObjectList( objects=[], rx=0.0, ry=0.0, rz=0.0 ): if all(x is not None for x in objects): map( lambda x: setLocalRotationAxisOfObject(objects[x]+'.rotateAxis',[rx,ry,rz]), range(0,len(objects))) ##set local rotations axis to specified rotations on specified object # ## def setLocalRotationAxisOfObject( obj, rotation ): cmds.rotate(rotation[0],rotation[1],rotation[2], obj,objectSpace=True) def setLocalRotationAxisOfObjectList_unitTest(): j1=cmds.joint(p=[0,4,0]) j2=cmds.joint(p=[0,3,0]) j3=cmds.joint(p=[0,2,0]) j4=cmds.joint(p=[0,1,0]) setLocalRotationAxisOfObjectList( [j1,j2,j3,j4], rx=0.0,ry=90.0,rz=0.0)