Unity "Autogrid" button

When placing a object in unity, I find that click dragging the asset from Project into scene is ok, but it just displaces along the camera Z axis, bringing a lot of tweaking time.

in 3ds max I am used to the "Autogrid" feature where you place objects onto a existing object surface normal, is there anything like that in unity?

Yes, use the Ctrl (hold) and drag the object in the scene window to snap the object on to the grid.