I had this problem when creating a plaque with a military crest on it and a plate for inscriptions. I needed the crest on top of the plaque as well as the plate. What I found was that splitting the crest assembly into individual objects and then merging ALL objects together allowed me to place the crest on top of the plaque and to lay the plate on top of the plaque as well. It becomes EXACTLY as you would imagine it should act before splitting and merging. This works incredibly well although you lose the ability to merge assemblies to keep things straight. You just need to name the bigger objects something appropriate to keep organized. I hope this helps.
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