Position details procedurally?

[weasel47]

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to position details procedurally.
As an example, let's say I had bolt head and I had a bunch of randomly-generated panels of weird shapes (using the Distance node to get the shapes) and I wanted to place some bolts around the intersections of the panels.  It's not too hard to find and isolate those intersections procedurally, but how would I get the bolts there?  I wouldn't want to position the bolts myself, because the intersections would be in different places if seeds or parameters were tweaked.
Essentially what I want is a splatter or tile generator that positions details in a non-regular but also non-random pattern, such as positioning one where ever there's a small white area on a mask (which I realize is a little bit complicated to define).

There are lots of other use-cases for a tool like this, if it's possible to do.  Anyone have any ideas?

[Cory McG]

If you can define these positions mathematically, FXMap would be good for this. The Quadrant node has position offsets that can be defined with functions, and this, often in conjunction with an Iterate node, can do many useful things.

If you're using an image to define the locations, though, like in your mask example, it might be simpler to use Tile Sampler, which can be set up to do this sort of thing without you having to do all the technical work.