Realm of Lace Rules The signature "Realm of Lace" family of rules uses:

Birth conditions: Based on sum of neighbor degrees Survival conditions: Based on sum of neighbor degrees Death conditions: Specific degree counts that cause node death Eligibility: Nodes must meet conditions to form connections

Good question... and I explored this a lot in the rules - some of the parameters are extremely sensitive... so it takes a lot of trial and error...

The secret to getting good overall organization and symmetry might be the approach taken by these two guys:

http://fleen.org

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/282037995384211853/

(For that second guy, see his earlier stuff. His butterfly origami. It's stronger

Which is to say, rather than building a large system from cells, they start with a large simple system and then differentiate it. Recursively.

Now how that might be applied to your vision is a question