I want to take a sqaure cross section, on a curve, and twist it. Similar to how a blacksmith would take square stock, heat it, and turn it… Seems like a simple thing…
Try Twist. Start the command and hit F1 to see the Help article for it.
I agree with John I recently needed to twist a triple stack of wire for a ring top I was designing and found that with a bit of playing the wire came out perfect. Attached image of top.
All my best … Danny
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Sorry boys, I still dont see how I can get an object to twist around a rail curve. I have an ellipse and want the square cross section to be twisted along that curve… What am I missing?
Twist it while it’s straight and Flow it around your curve.
Hoffmanasher,
You will need to get the length of your ellipse first and then make your square somewhat longer once you have the desired twist trim it to the length of the ellipse. Then as John said flow the twisted square around the curve.
All my best … Danny
For an alternate method, use Spiral, AroundCurve, pick your ellipse for the path, set the number of turns etc. Now use the ellipse and the spiral curve for a two rail sweep with your square as the profile curve. This method saves you from having to worry about the ends meeting (they don’t in the image Danny posted).
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Mark,
As you saw my twist did not match up on the ends. As this was mostly a sketch I did not worry to much about it. If this were a final for a 3D printer needless to say it would have needed to be perfect.
I tried what you said and it seems like I am not understanding what you are telling me to do. I made an ellipse, made a 1mm square that is centered on the ellipse line. I did the spiral curve and see the lines of the spiral but I cannot see where you can do a two rail sweep using my 1mm square.
All my best … Danny
Danny,
Maybe an image will make it clearer. Although the spiral curve only has four turns, the square has four corners, so the result looks four times denser.
This works well for Hoffmanasher’s situation. For yours, to get a cable look, you could sweep four circles, as shown below. But the resulting forms are distorted, for cleaner geometry I would try the second method below as an easy way to get four path curves for pipes. 
Mark,
Your examples go along with the old saying “one picture is worth one thousand words” . I nearly had it right either later today or tomorrow I will play with this and once I do I will get back to you.
Thank you for taking the time to give me this information I am sure I will use this on many projects in the future.
All my best … Danny
How would you do the twist for a heart?