I have been trying to create the attached ellipse and line intersection. I can create a series of elongated boxes with decreasing depth and spacing but cannot get any of the path effects to work when I try to intersect with ellipse. The work flow was

1. Create rectangle
2. Create cloned tile manipulating the cumulative rectangle height and spacing
3. Result a stack of rectangle with decreasing  and spacing
4. Unlink clone
5. Group the stacked rectangles, object to path
6. Create ellipse place behind stack of rectangles the attempt object intersection. initially select ellipse then holding ctrl try to grab stacked rectangle but nothing happens

Any help would be appreciated or suggestions for an alternate work flow

Maybe this:

1. Create rectangle
2. Create cloned tile manipulating the cumulative rectangle height and spacing
3. Result a stack of rectangle with decreasing  and spacing
4. Unlink clone
5. Group the stacked rectangles, object to path  Select all rectangles, Path>combine
6. Create ellipse place behind stack of rectangles the attempt object intersection. initially select ellipse then holding ctrl try to grab stacked rectangle but nothing happens

Thanks it worked, response appreciated.