Setting a home position?

Hi there.

I have an animation to finish which is a load of components coming together to build the final displayed object on screen. Nothing unusual or clever.

I’ve not done this before, but thinking about it I have to put everything together, then set the keyframes for the end of the animation and work forwards to the beginning, which is going to boggle my brain!

If there were a way to set a ‘home’ position for all the objects I wouldn’t have to worry about the positions as I tried and tested different movements / graphs / dopes etc.

How do you folks handle this kind of situation?

Many thanks.