Problem with Subdivide/Extrude.

Hi everybody,

I'm trying to achieve the same results as shown below but i'm running into some trouble. What is happening is that the surface that i'm trying to achieve this effect on his quite irregular (it's not a simple rectangle or box but a complex surface with like 20 sides). What happens is that since the surface is i guess irregular, all the subdividing points don't show up. But when i set the surface to a  box all the points show up.

also is there a way to have a point/curve attractor extrude certain geometries (like below)?