When I used to design automated machinery, I would use configurations to show my machine in various stages of the cycle. This worked great for providing drawing views of my assemblies, but didn't work so great for detecting interferences between moving components along the path of motion. For instance, if I had a pick and place robot (picks a part up from point A, then moves to point B) that crashed somewhere in the middle of its path of motion, I wouldn't know until it was too late (sorry about that, Chief). Thankfully, there's a way to drag my parts and sub-assemblies through their full path of motion without the need to dissolve all my subassemblies.