AUX TRACKS ARE AMAZING ADDITION AND I USE THEM ALL THE TIME. IF YOU WANT TO UN-CLUTTER THE TRACK PANE, HIDE THE TRACKS FEEDING THE AUX.   YOU CAN GO A STEP FURTHER ASSUMING THE GROUP OF TRACKS BECOMES STATIC AS YOUR MIX PROGRESSES; ONE GREAT FEATURE OF AUX TRACKS IS THAT YOU CAN RECORD THE AUDIO CONTENT IN REAL TIME WHICH CAN BE AWESOME FOR ANY NUMBER OF REASONS.   PATCH POINTS.... I'M STILL UNCLEAR HOW THEY ACTUALLY WORK BUT HAVE SUCCESSFULLY USED THEM A FEW TIMES
 

CAPS LOCK!!!

Big user of Aux tracks here.
 
This is great for submixing stuff and having groups with independent effects saved together.
 
For example, I might set up a folder for my drums, and inside I'll have:
 
Kick in / out / sample going to a Kick AUX
Snare top / bottom going to a Snare AUX
All of the overhead mics (cymbals, hats, etc.) going to an Overheads AUX
All of the toms going to a Toms AUX
 
Each of these sub-mix AUX tracks feed a send to a Drum Reverb AUX
 
Then all of those going to a Drums Submix AUX.
 
If I want to turn the kit up, I just adjust the volume of that. I can mute or solo the entire kit without affecting any other part of the mix, and when I collapse the folder, all of that stuff is out of the way rather than thinking about all of the elements that would otherwise be down in the Buss pane.
 
Same goes for guitar mixes, vocal mixes, etc.
 
About the only thing I really run down in the Buss pane now is a common reverb, delay and slapback/chorus send, and the master, and that's it. So much neater for me!

bitflipper
The best justification I've identified so far: combining multi-instrument ensembles such as drum kits and orchestral string sections into an aux track. Kick, snare, overheads, etc. become one instrument, "drums". Violins, Violas and Celli become "strings". A bus can do that, of course, but what the aux track does for you is position the combined meta-instrument up in the track pane where it belongs during mixing, rather than down in the bus pane far from the action.
 

I am with you on this bitflipper
 
This is exactly why I use Aux tracks. mainly for the organization within the tracks area.  All of my Aux tracks all are colored grey, and I still use the Mercury Theme as as the  Black theme, no matter how good it looks, doesn't provide full track colorization yet, Bakers get it together ! 
 
I like sending all same or like instruments to an Aux track and managing it's overall volume from the Aux tracks alone when the group mix has been completed.  I can then take those Aux tracks and send them to the buses  for my Console view for the final Mix Down process and not have to worry about bunch of tracks.  

AUX tracks act like an analog multitrack. Route tracks to respective busses. Route busses to respective AUX tracks. Arm each AUX track to record and record them all at once. Now you have an actual wave track for each bus group that can be edited and adjusted to taste and then exported elsewhere for mixing if desired.
 
Create an AUX folder for quick solo/muting etc.

I use Aux tracks where I want an effect where there is no dry and wet control or I want to keep the effect on it's own track, so it can be bounced for later. Not quite got my head around using Patch Points though although it would seem to serve as a way to combine the dry and effected to signal into a summed output.
 
I find that bouncing directly is quicker than freezing sometimes, especially real-time on big East West samplers. Another thing about aux tracks is you can feed other tracks to them and just keep your main busses for overall group tracks. 
 
Anyway we all work differently.
 

If you're an old school analogue mixer like me, the aux tracks really bring back more immediate control to a audio track for routing and fx right where their needed. Not had a need for patch points yet.  
 
Super feature.
 
G

Patch points are a bit confusing at this point. Tried following the directions but nothing works as described for me. Maybe a video will help.

The easiest way to describe it would be like this to me.
 
Aux tracks are individual submix which can be used to record and track with. Or have for example, an individual track effect. Also be aware Aux tracks behave like Inserts and rely on the input echo on to be heard. 
 
Patch tracks could be used to "patch" a series of aux tracks or combine the dry track and aux track, For bouncing down ideas or summing them without freezing or otherwise rendering the originals.
 
As algebra, A - dry, B - aux, C - patch, D -buss output.  A + B = track with effects, A + B + C =  combined tracks and D is the final destination. This is how I interpret it.
 
 Just had a thought, it would AB = C because the aux track relies on the input from the dry track input to create it's output. I used them on my track Yujo to create in track send effects. The final output was sent to the relevant group audio bus to make it part of the overall sound - or glue it as Pro engineers prattle on about.
 

I've started using Aux tracks as virtual tape sends for things like drums and strings. This is because of the analogue emulation aesthetic. You see, to use the console emulator as a summing effect, you need to place this effect last in the signal chain on a channel, and first on a buss. To emulate an analouge signal chain, the best way to do this is to create a tape aux...otherwise the tape emulation effect is in the wrong position in the signal chain, and when you're adding harmonic distortion, the signal chain is everything. I then feed the tape aux to a buss for final limiting and processing...these aux tracks are great too, because you can record the final mix of the drums and strings, then freeze the aux track, again much like printing to tape. Even though I have a quad core, 8 thread computer with 16 gig of ram, and an SSD drive...freeing up CPU and memory resources is invaluable particulary when you use a lot of phase linear stuff, virtual binaural stuff and like to mix and master within a session.
 
Ben