I first came across this when I had to build an elliptical desk. The draftsman had the computer draw an ellipse, then added 1" molding around the edge. It didn't really matter to my method of construction whether or not the outer edge of the molding was an ellipse or not, but it got me thinking about it nonetheless. Since then, I've had to build 2 other elliptical desks (that's 3 in 4 years!), all of which were drafted using the same technique. On some desks it was pretty apparent that the outer band wasn't an ellipse.
