I'm sure this has been discussed before but I'm not sure what to search for. Can someone help?

So I have V4 with a conforming hair figure that has braids. I'm using PP2010. When I pose v4 the braids intersect the figure even though the hair moves correctly with the head.  I tried turning on collisons for the hair and v4 and made a key frame for the new pose but that doesn't help. Are collisions only for animation? What do collisons actually do and how do you use them?

There are magnets for the braids so I can manually move the braids out from inside the v4 figure, but it seems to me there should be a simple way by now for Poser to understand collisions and intersections.

 I guess this happens with arms and legs too. Is there no simple way to fix this? it's troublesome and I guess I just expect poser figures to have volume or something so one wouldn't have to jump through hoops to fix this and similar issues.

Am I missing something really obvious? Any suggestions on how to address this issue or where to go for help? 

I'm sorry if I sound too strident, I'm slightly frustrated. Otherwise I love Poser.

Thanks Mike