Could there ever be a "Tile with borders" operation to parameterize the size without stretching?
I asked this on Reddit, but then realized it would make a lot more sense here...
At least half of the parametric models I see look like they could be expressed as "Cut off the borders with a plane to make separate center, edge, and corner parts, then tile(and stretch if needed) the center and border to make it the target final you want, and then put it all together".
Which is more or less what you can do in CSS for web design.
Things like Gridfinity, and a lot of different types of box, anything pegboard-like, probably some fabrics and chainmail, etc can all fit that model.
Seeing as how STEP files are XML and could have metadata, it seems like you could even embed all the cutting planes(Along with the min and max valid sizes and the step size, and which elements should be tiled to the closest size before stretching, and which should just be stretched) in the file.
It would be super cool to just be able to import something and tile it to exactly the right size right in a slicer!