Hi Burr, yup a circle is a conic section curve too, and doing a one directional scale of the circle does produce an ellipse from that.

I'm not sure if drawing a circle was allowed for what Anthony had in mind or not, I'm not really quite sure what he was looking for in creating an ellipse without using the ellipse or conic tools, I thought maybe he meant by making a curve by just placing control points directly?

Anthony - maybe instead of saying which tools you don't want to use to make an ellipse, maybe you could describe which other tools you did want to use to create it?

But of course it's by far the easiest to use the ellipse commands to build an ellipse, that's what they are there for... So I am kind of puzzled by what you're trying to accomplish there.

- Michael