I learned that presentation transformation will not change anything. I want to move a part in an assembly model along x axis and check whether there is collision on the path of movement. 

Because I don't want the mates and any constraints to disappear after moving a part, I figured that presentation transformation will work for me. my concern is can I still do collision detection if i don't want to make any changes to mate features. And if anybody can show me some code of presentation transformation and collision detection, i would really appreciate the help.