The align tool does work in a coherent way but it’s not what you are looking for. I think you want the behavior of align when aligning a surface to a plane (where it does not change the relative orthogonal positions) with multi-selection of the surfaces to align. In addition to that, you probably want a “pack” or auto-layout type feature that brings the parts fairly close together along the axis orthogonal to the alignment plane.
The align tool is good at what it does but it doesn’t do this. Hopefully they’ll add at least the multi-select when aligning to a plane or surface (or rather the plane of the surface b/c I wouldn’t want the parts to all pile up centered on the surface which is what the align tool currently does with one selection).
The auto-layout would be more complicated but in the short term it would be great if a simple algorithm could be in place for this to expand in the future. I think in the short term it would be great to auto layout (simple fixed distance from each other without overlap) objects so that it’s easier refine the positions manually.
As was mentioned in another related thread, imported models often have the origin somewhere other than 0,0,0 and when combined multiples, it becomes tedious to align them to the same plane let alone to a manageable space on the screen.