I mentioned this possibility already in another post. But I thought to put
it also in the Tutorial section that users may have easier access to it.

VectorStyler can assign dashes to a stroke. If we expand such a stroke
we could replace the dashes with another shape

Lets create a Blend between two strokes. Expand the Blend and ungroup them.
Apply dashes to the Paths and expand the stroke then.

Choose a shape now, any one will do and create a symbol from it.
Select all dashes shapes go to Replace select your Symbol
and voila you got the dashes replaced with any shape you like

Here a Video which shows the steps
it also shows how to add a gradient to it
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made also the fill for this Pattern this way
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