The present invention, an object display system, provides a system and method for positioning objects on a viewing area. One embodiment can be viewed as providing a method comprising the steps of specifying a plurality of objects, specifying a plurality of object pairs from the plurality of objects, specifying a potential function for each one of the specified object pairs, specifying a similarity value (s) for each one of the specified object pairs, determining an energy (e) for each one of the potential functions and solving for the minimum total energy (E) of the plurality of potential functions such that a distance (r) between each of the specified object pairs is determined.