Helix around a torus?

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to model an electromagnet and can't seem to find a video on youtube or explanations elsewhere on how to form a coil around a torus. If anyone could help me out with this it would be greatly appreciated.

[stephenkmann]

you can try spiral.mel 

https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/make-spiral-in-maya-script-for-maya

 basically what it does is project a curve around a cylinder and then deform the cylinder into different shapes. 

 the nice thing is you can adjust the number of points along the curve for smoothness

hth

-=s