The transformBy() function is used to apply a 3D transformation matrix to an entity.
getTransformedCopy() is used to create a non-database resident transformed copy of entity. It's default implementation clones the entity and calls transformBy(). In custom class it can be overridden. For example OdDbText::transformBy() requires only uni-scaled matrix. But OdDbText::getTransformedCopy() works with non-uniscaled matrix and modifies text width factor.