NICKL will work on lots of different types of objects, in this case a Spline Primitive Helix. It does not really resemble a helix anymore does it? That's because I have a NICKL region running in Spherical mode with a very large negative Strength value being applied to is. This sucks the spline through the middle of the NICKL region and spits it out the other side. Then I dropped the whole wild mess under a Metaball object and played with the settings and got this:
