thanks michael,

that helped a lot. is there a way to get the width of the ellipse. i'm trying to use the center snap you pointed out to recreate an ellipse. moreover, i'm trying to confirm the geo coming out of the moi conic section tool. you have an ellipse tool in moi, so i was trying to create an ellipse with that tool and see if it agrees with the output from the conic section tool. of course the problem is not enough info about what is coming out of the conic section tool to do this.

i'm trying to use stevens' method to create an ellipse. i've been able to do that, just can't match the dimensions yet. ultimately, what brian posted is the best final solution to the main problem. i'm just trying to learn and check things out.

got a big headache at the moment, lol, literally.