How to make existing block rotations carry over to 1.21

[barren hamlet]

I'm working my way through my old blocks, and I've got most of them working (they're all pretty simple, I just need them to build with and to look good). I used "minecraft:cardinal_direction" instead of "bridge:block_rotation" but the rotation doesn't carry over to the blocks already on the map, and they're seemingly impossible to place/set with worldedit like they used to be. I'm curious if there's an easy caveat to this, or if there's some scripting I have to learn.

Example pic; a pillar of custom blocks which are all defaulted to the same(wrong) direction

[barren hamlet]

another block example; the file I have now, the block with various rotations, and the old blocks with their rotation reset

[manic kite]

doubt there's a way to fix this.

all of this stuff depend on the direction the player is facing when it's placed.
I dont see how you would restore that without rebuilding.

[gleaming mantle]

bridge:block_rotation used to always flip rotation values by 180 degrees

try adding a y_rotation_offset of 180 like below

    "traits": {
        "minecraft:placement_direction": {
            "enabled_states": [
                "minecraft:cardinal_direction"
            ],
            "y_rotation_offset": 180
        }
    }
}```

[barren hamlet]

placing the blocks down works fine, my problem is that blocks that were already in the world have basically reset to the default placement

like, if the blockbench model is facing south, all the blocks are facing that direction by default, since the rotation set by bridge:block_rotation didn't seem to persist when i changed to minecraft:cardinal_direction

[gleaming mantle]

yeahhhh since its a different data value thats been removed it'll be impossible to retrieve them