Micheal,

sorry, I missed the second part of your question.

I started with creating an ellipse. I then trimmed the ellipse in 2 pieces. Then I used the sweep command to create the spring. I also tried to move the end points (where both springs connect), the result was getting a bit closer to what I need, but I got some alignment issues. The spring seems to need an offset and a twist, but I don't know how to accomplish that.

Yves