Group,attach or boolean?

Group, attach or boolean?
3ds max offers 3 ways of uniting objects: Group,attach and  boolean.
 Up untill now I could create my objects but did not now how to unit them.

I did not now how the bone system  and animation works, attach seems the best way.
Boolean is pretty much excluded because it unites and makes 1 object out of 2, which does not allow us to rotate and move the once 2 objects seperatly.
So I wanted to animate the the first part of my animation the scene with the claw.

 

Here is my model:

So I wanted to make the claw move in a jerky move to indicate that it is disabled, I  wanted the round part to rotate and the claws to open and close. So I decided to do the rotation first and then work on the claws opening and closind individualy.

So if I select the objects involved the the object will rotate around their pivot point offering me no good.

If I group and center the pivot point then the rotation works fine. You can see the time frames above.

Next step was to ungroup and  rotate the talons individualy. The problem is once i ungroup the key frames are still there but there is no animation, the reason for this is because the key frame remembers the position of the objects as a group and not as individual objects.

So groouping  and boolean are not good options for animation, that leaves me with attach.

And attach is the ideal object here, it works with bones and units the objects but still allows you to rotate and move them within.

So to recap:

Boolean unite: good to create one solid object out of 2 or more objects. Expect to use boolean unit to create your objects but not to unite them. and not for animations.

              Cons: can only unite 2 per operation, if a convert to is applied the operation is unreversable.

               Pros: creates solid shapes.

Group: good to group and move a set of objects around or rotate.

     Cons: One in group objects can not be altered, does not work well with animation.

     Pros: you can make large grouping and ungrouping very fast and easy, you can also have groups of groups.

Attach : great for animations and unite body parts together

            Cons and pros are not given since its the only one that can be used for animation.