One alternative to alternate state is through island tables. Keep separate island tables for needed dimensions. Let user make selections in these island tables fields, based on the selections use the conditions in your measures through set analysis in the charts and comparitive visualization can be created.
For example. You can have two separate filters of time period. Base Period and Current Period. Use the selections of the period in the measure's set expression through getfieldselections function. It will aggregate values based on selected time period.
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