Arranging ‘loose’ parts for a natural looking render

A little test for myself to see if I could bring two skills together, the twist and the sweep, into something useful.
I’m OK with the render but it took far, far too long to just get everything on the ‘floor’ and the ring through the hole without interference; done, pretty much, by eye and a lot of fiddling around in Parametric. Even then I had to force a slightly unnatural alignment between the components to simplify adjustments. More than two or three elements would drive me insane.
Am I missing something obvious here? A tool or approach that would make this sort of assembly easier? Any tips?



