how to make Helix/Spiral curve from Ellipse

Yes, but you will have to use an elliptical extruded surface cylinder and a helical swept surface.

Ping,

Taking What Kelvin suggested and then modifying what he provided I came up with this.

Ping,

This is what popped into my head for an elliptical spiral, and from there a tapered elliptical "helix".  This method won't work for constant sized elliptical or other shaped "helixs" though.

Erik,

And a little more detail.

Don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but if you don't need a perfect ellipse, don't forget the trusty curve thru xyz points.

I've found that for many purposes just four points around a circle, or in this case an ellipse, will yield a curve that is pretty close to the exact shape. The exceptions being the ends, which can usually be "tweaked" by adding a few extra points, or just cut off the offending part.  Sometimes it's quicker to generate a big set of points with a spread sheet (auto-fill is your friend) than to make reference geometry.  And, once you have a spreadsheet with your point set, changing it to get different sizes or proportions is very easy.  In the examples here it would be a simple matter to adjust the x and y columns to make a tapered "helix" or the z column to make a variable pitch.

With a little thought (and a pencil) it's often easier to come up with the xyz points for a curve, than you might think at first glance.  It usually takes fewer than you think to get "close enough", even for seemingly complex shapes.

In these examples note that the sketches of ellipses are just to show how close (or not) the curves are to true ellipses. The curve geometry is from imported .txt files.  I attached the xyz point file for the red curve.

Two curves through x,y,z points,

Comparison to true ellipses, sketches 2 & 3 showing.

This may not be what you are looking for, but it gives a good approximation of a helix/ellipse

Take a look and let me know if it works for you.

Equation driven curve.  adjust the coefficients to change the size and and number of coils.  It doesn't appear to be controllable outside of the property manager

Here is a Microsoft Word file explaining what I did, with some images attached.  This file can be manipulated to whatever size ellipse you need, as well as pitch and number of coils.

I just notice that the formulas were wrong, thats what I get for cut and paste, they should be 0.25 and 0.5 and 0.75 not 1/3 and so on...This method works for square and rectangular springs/helix as well.

There is another way to use trig to create an elliptical helix that is a little easier to control:

Useing for example Sin(x) for one axis and 2*Cos(x) for the other axis you can create the ellipse.  Verying "x" will give you the number of coils and X1 and X2 is the start and end point (height of spring).

The image below shows the first axis:

The next image shows the second axis perpendicular to the first:

Now that you have the Sin and Cos curves, you'll need to project them onto eachother (Insert --> Curve --> Projected --> Sketch on Sketch):

Ping

You can also create a helix from a circle then non-linear scale it. Unfortunately, you can't scale the helix curve directly. You have to make a solid, scale that, and use an edge from the solid as a path for the coil.

Dwight