Random distribution of objects in space, with no overlap

Do you guys know any math theory that allows you to fill a space with random objects, so that they don’t overlap?

I remember 2 threads on kirupa recently, however I only managed to find one:

http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=331645&highlight=AS3+Random+Grid+sized+tiles

Ok, here is another one:

http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=333547&highlight=Random+movieclip+location+overlap

On a rectangle. Not fill it, but place the objects so that they don’t overlap, and so that it looks organic (not all put evenly, nor in a corner).

I did that once, a long time ago. What I did was create a grid to place the items on, mathematically.

First you get the square root of the number of items you have, and Math.ceil() that. That number you have now is the number of rows as well as number of columns.

This means you have created yourself a grid with those rows and columns, which you can use to place your item in a certain cell somewhere in that grid.

Using Math.random() you can randomly chose a cell to add a little randomness.

The only problem is when the items are not equal size, then my solution wont really work that well.. But it might help you out a bit

may be http://www.box2dflash.org/?

I did the following project using http://www.box2dflash.org/ in which bubbles collide with each other but they don’t overlap: http://www.luftforalle.no/

Learning box2d flash is a bit pain but its a nice library.

Following website has one of the best tutorials/articles on box2dflash: http://www.emanueleferonato.com/

I did that once, a long time ago. What I did was create a grid to place the items on, mathematically.

First you get the square root of the number of items you have, and Math.ceil() that. That number you have now is the number of rows as well as number of columns.

This means you have created yourself a grid with those rows and columns, which you can use to place your item in a certain cell somewhere in that grid.

Using Math.random() you can randomly chose a cell to add a little randomness.

The only problem is when the items are not equal size, then my solution wont really work that well.. But it might help you out a bit

Yep, I know I can use a grid, but I want a more organic solution, not evenly positioned elements. There must be some math theories to do that.