You seem to have the bending part. So...
You want as few bends as possible in each run.
Obviously a straight line is often the shortest. Less conduit, wire and couplings.
Often I will use a 22.5* offset rather than the usual 30* bends because it saves a whopping total of 15*. I've seen cases in which they needed everybody [15 people] to make a pull which had 5 90*s in it.
In walls, often they will go up a foot or two, then 90* across to the next box and 90* down. Now two 90*s aren't that much and it's only three or four wires anyway, but still. It's possible to run straight if you want to [no bends].
One way to do walls is to run a conduit from the outlet box up to the top stud and poke thru. Arlington makes a bracket that allows you to mount your top box about 2" above the top stud. I don't know why you want to do that.
What you should do is cut your conduit about 1/8" short of the top surface and stick a connector on it and then install it. That way, your top box will fit flatly on the top surface and can be held down with two screws thru those little holes. [Those holes near the front edge were originally so they could add brackets on, before the age of spot-welding.] [These holes are often the perfect size for self-threading, 10-32 ground screws.]
Remember that you can go 36" from the box before you need to fasten it down. Starting from your lowest hole, this is hardly noticeable so you save a box offset.
For a large number of conduits going in the same direction, Uni-Strut and racks make sense.
~Peter J. Michael
