"I've made a bunch of factories that are as compact as possible and designed to make a full belt of any freeplay shape . They all either produce 1 belt of a 4-layer or 3-layer shape or 2 belts of a 2-layer shape. The first 2 (Version 3 and Version 5) were made before the wires update and needed a selection panel. V5 is more resource efficient and has a better selection panel than V3. Version 6 uses wiring to make it automatic and its as resource efficient as V5 AND 1/3 the volume! All the wiring fits within the area of the factory. The scale is the same for all 3 designs so you can see the just how compact the new one is. The only major downside is that it takes ages to switch to a new shape: ~4 mins after switching to get the first new correct shape and ~7 mins before its producing at max speed. I'm sure its possible to make it faster and maybe even slightly smaller too. I think my next design will be focused on minimising switching time. Comment if you want to know how any of it works and I already have a guide about the first 2 designs if you want to check them out :) .

Edit: With some pretty small adjustments I've cut down the switching time to just 2 mins for the first new shape and 3.5 mins for for a max belt. I made a detector which sends a pulse when the shape changes then activates a 20 second timer during which everything in the stacker arrays, painters and belts are trashed. It only added 5 tiles to the height and was well worth it."