The problem is to mate a wire that curves thru 3 dimensions and attaches to a curved elliptical cylinder. Please see the attached jpeg, which is of the spinal cord, showing the dorsal roots (insulated wires) attaching to the spinal cord (simplified to an ellipse for now in my model). The wires curve thru 3 dimensions, altho right now I'd settle for 2, and a plane at an angle to Top and Front would be a fine approximation.

I can think of a couple of ways to approach this but can't quite make them work or maybe these approaches are wrong.

Approach 1: Do an in-place mate by drawing a spline-on-surface on the surface of the cylinder and using Sweep. Can't get this to work.

Approach 2: Use sketches of circles on several planes to guide a 3D loft, or do a circle for a profile and spline for a path for a sweep (see attached files) then somehow cut the end of the resulting curved cylinder in the exact profile of the elliptical cylinder and somehow mate them (maybe use parallel faces and then a centerline and point in the two sketches?). I can do the loft, don't know how to do the cut and mate.

If you post a file, can you make it backward-compatible with SW9? Thanks for any help.