Multi-level assemblies with motion

[MechEng83]

OK, for any advanced users of Inventor, I have a question about assemblies.

First off, I am a user of ProE/Creo in my day job, so my expectations and biases come from that perspective.

In inventor, I am having trouble with multi-level assemblies and degree of freedom motion. If I create an assembly of parts with a range of motion (like a pneumatic actuator), I can easily drag the mobile portion of the assembly to show the range of motion. However, If I then use that part as a component of another assembly (piston attached to rotating arm), the range of motion appears to be fixed to the last state of the lower level assembly.

Is there a way to actually move parts in a sub assembly from a top level assembly, or is this action not possible in inventor? I'm accustomed to creating moveable assemblies in ProE, then joining several of those to view the complex motions created by joining multiple pieces.

The only work around I've been able to come up with is to have all parts in one giant assembly, so there are no sub-assemblies. This seem ridiculous to me, so I'm hoping there's some awesome trick I'm missing to allow motion of subassemblies in Inventor.

Thanks for your help!