Modifier idea - "Fractional Array"

I was staring at a wooden plank wall and it gave me the following idea for a modifier.
For now Array modifier copies the whole geometry of the original mesh, but “Fractional Array” would allow you to copy fractions of the mesh, you could select if you wanted to keep the end of the mesh open or closed.

Instead of copy steps (1,2,…100,…) you could simply put (1.0, 1.1,…5.6,…100.1) etc. Show the array would “flow” the copies of the mesh along the values.

So for example value 1.3 would show original mesh + 0.3 of the mesh.

I’m not sure if I make myself enough clear. I hope so.

It would be handy for wooden blank walls where builders sometime cut only part of the blank to end the wall.
I’m sure there are other similar surfaces.

The difficulty with an idea like this is that what constitutes a fraction of a mesh would need to be so specifically defined that it would only work for this rather narrow use case… which would be difficult to justify. And if the definition of fraction isn’t narrowly defined, it could be nearly anything… therefore too imprecise to usefully implement.

Really, though, if your concern is what happens when reaching the end of the array, the functionality you’re looking for can be achieved using the Start/End Object feature that’s already in the Array modifier.

In cases like a wall made of boards though, you might want to have random or differing lengths at the start and end of each section because the pattern is not entirely uniform.

I would imagine a fractional array to be functionality added to the existing array modifier, where in cases where random offsets are used, you can do uniform cutting off of the mesh at a certain coordinate on the axis of choice (which would be useful for architectural modeling).

Now it all depends on how much overlap this would have with the boolean modifier, but it may not hurt to add it to the array modifier if it’s a simple enough addition.

That seems like a perfect case to use another modifier after the array one. make a bounding box the size you want your cladding to be and add a boolean modifer on it.

we have a full set of modifiers that we can use in combination with eachother, I see no reason to duplicate functions within the modifiers themselves.