How to do a curved wall with empty parts in a “chess pattern” distribution?
Thank you guys! 
Profile Builder, Flex Tools and Medeek are a few that would do that easily.
I would draw your base circle with centerline cross hairs and make it a group and lock it. Then draw a large brick component and use rotate / divide to move them around the circle.
In between these large bricks will be a gap. Draw a small brick component and position it between two larger bricks - adjusting its size and rotation as needed. Then rotate / divide or rotate + copy to get them into position.
You now have a ring of bricks. Make this a component.
Move + copy up to make a second ring. Rotate it so it’s offset from the lower ring. Copy up / repeat at needed.
Illustrating basically what @bmike described although it sounds like you want gaps instead of small bricks. I created the bottom row, copied it up, rotated it a little to make the second row and then copied both rows up.
Or you can make it all in one row, like this… then move + copy them up, and rotate the second one, and move + copy as needed.
If you need to make them ‘solid’ to have mortar you can add that as needed either to each beginning brick, or later, with a shape that fills them in between.
Ahh, I see - then you just don’t draw the small component. Or delete it:
cross hairs? could you make a screen recording of it?
thank you very much
Draw a circle.
Draw two lines across the circle to create a target.
Delete the faces.
Make a group.
Lock the group.
Use this ‘target’ to easily pick your center, to control rotation / copy : etc.
If you are clever you will consider how many segments your circle has to make your brick layout easier…
You could start this using the origin as the starting point to make things easier.
