Hi Jacob - right now MoI does not have a method to construct a helix that is wrapped around a curve rather than wrapped around a straight line. I think that is what you would need to use the same construction method that you are currently using.
In the future I would like to make this work using 1-rail sweep. But right now it can be hard to make 1-rail sweep purposely twist things because there is a bunch of stuff in it that tries to prevent twisting by matching up the pieces between each pair of profile curves such that they have the most untwisted relationship to one another. That's because for more regular type of shapes twisting is usually not wanted.
However, it is possible to introduce twisting by using Loft rather than sweep, because you can adjust the "seam point" in Loft for how each section aligns. But that will probably be pretty tedious to adjust for many sections.
What is your end purpose for this model, is it for doing a rendering?
It can often times be better for rendering to instead apply this kind of bumping or knurling as a texture map rather than building it as actual geometry. For that approach you would just make a simple tube using a circle profile, and then apply something like a bump map or displacement map texture in your rendering program to give it that knurled look.
- Michael
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