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MCP

RhinoArtisan MCP

Connect RhinoArtisan to your favorite AI assistant. RhinoArtisan exposes a local MCP server that lets compatible AI assistants work with RhinoArtisan directly inside Rhino — and not just for design. The same connection covers the whole RhinoArtisan workflow: designing, manufacturing checks, weights, pricing and reporting.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the open standard the whole AI industry is converging on — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft all speak it, and McNeel is building RhinoMCP on the same standard for Rhino itself. RhinoArtisan MCP brings Artisan’s jewelry tools into that world, and the two servers work side by side: connect both and your assistant gets Artisan’s jewelry tools next to McNeel’s Grasshopper and scripting tools. See Grasshopper + MCP for building ArtisanGrasshopper graphs by conversation.

Works with

Connect from the AI assistants you already use:

  • Claude Desktop — Anthropic’s Claude app, on every plan; a downloadable connector (or one command in Rhino) connects it
  • ChatGPT — through OpenAI’s Secure MCP Tunnel
  • Google Gemini — through Antigravity, Google’s agentic IDE

And from the tools developers live in:

Prefer to run a model on your own machine? LM Studio works too — with weaker results than a frontier model, serious hardware needs, and no support from us. Read the caveats before you try.

What this looks like

With Rhino and RhinoArtisan running, you ask your AI assistant:

“Add an oval 2-carat ruby at the origin and a half-carat round diamond on each side.”

The assistant discovers Artisan’s tools and the gems appear in your viewport — created by the exact same pipeline as the QuickGems tool, on the right layers, with the right materials, sized correctly for their carat weight.

And design is only the beginning. RhinoArtisan MCP is built on the same automation surface that powers every Artisan module, so the same conversation extends across your whole workflow:

“How much does this ring weigh in 18k gold — and what would it cost?”

“Is this model ready to print? Export the STL and prepare the production report.”

The whole workflow is there today — gems and every setting, shanks, pavé, booleans, relief, weight and price, printability, sprues, reports, exports, renders. The assistant can also look at your viewport, work with whatever you have selected, and script anything the typed tools don’t cover through the same Scripting API that powers Flow Studio. See Tools for the full list.

What’s new in 7.0.0.11

  • Documentation search. search_rhinoartisan_docs answers questions about using RhinoArtisan from the official documentation, with links to the pages it used.
  • Company standards. get_company_standards returns the rules the user’s company always follows — minimum sizes per metal, default metals, production steps — written once in RhinoArtisan’s options. Read them before building and follow them.
  • Long operations finish. A tool that takes minutes — pricing a busy document, a batch export, the smoke test — now returns its result instead of a timeout after two minutes.
  • Boutique. list_boutique_designs searches the Boutique collections installed on the computer and insert_boutique_design imports a design, optionally in white, yellow or rose 18K gold. get_boutique_catalog and download_boutique_kits show and install the online kits.
  • AI images. generate_ai_image turns the viewport into a photographic render with fal.ai, edits an image file or creates one from text. fal.ai bills each image to the user’s account.
  • Time tracking. get_time_tracking reports the hours spent on each file and each day, from the Time Tracker.
  • GLB in batch. export_glb_batch converts a folder of .3dm files to GLB without touching the open document.
  • Faster on big documents. Weights, prices, technical charts, the ring size estimate and lie_on_ground run several times faster on documents with hundreds of objects.
  • Change a stone’s cut. edit_gem takes shape: the gem keeps its id, position, material and carat weight (add carats for “a 1.5 ct oval”), and the settings built on it — prongs, bezel, basket, halo — rebuild around the new cut. Resizing a gem with edit_gem rebuilds them too.
  • Claw prongs, one vocabulary. Every setting with prongs takes prong_mode: ROUND, CUSTOM or CLAW (the advanced basket also OFFSET, DOUBLE and TRIPLE; DEFAULT and CIRCLE still read as ROUND). That covers add_basket_setting, add_advanced_basket, create_martini, create_tulip, create_trellis_setting, create_trilogy and now create_halo, whose center prongs had no claw over MCP before. edit_object switches the mode later and tunes the claw, with the same four values wherever the new claw is used (claw_cap_distance, claw_cap_height, claw_tip_width, claw_tip_smoothness). Claw tips are drawn in Render mode only.
  • Advanced basket, prong by prong. edit_object reaches every value of the panel’s per-prong and per-rail editors by path: {"prongs[*].inclination": 12} sets every prong, {"prongs[0].gem_inside": 0.2} or {"rails[1].width": 1.2} just one. describe_object_parameters shows the model and the paths.
  • Clients that send arguments as text. edit_object reads a section or a call sent as JSON text ("upper_rail": "{\"width\": 1.3}") and "true" for a call such as fit_to_gem, so it works from clients that stringify the arguments the schema doesn’t declare.
  • Fixes. A ring size set with set_document_settings now applies to the rings created after it. Split shanks build on any plane and can still be edited after being moved. A row of gems on a curve reports its new stone count after a resize. A setting deleted in Rhino no longer stays in list_objects until the next refresh. save_document with a path leaves the document saved as that file (it used to stay “unsaved”). A profile on a basket’s prongs switches them to CUSTOM, as on its rails, and a basket prong that becomes CUSTOM starts with its section turned 90° (pass prong_rotation for another angle). create_cabochon places the stone at x/y/z as documented and sizes it with width/length/height: the point used to become the stone’s size, so “a cabochon at x = 80” came out 80 mm wide. Negative numbers inside lists keep their sign in tool results (a smart profile’s SectionMirrorOf read [1; 1; 1; 1] for [-1; -1; -1; 1]).

What’s new in 7.0.0.10

  • Presets. Build from a saved element with element on about 25 create tools, apply one to an existing object with edit_object {"element": …}, store an object as a new preset with save_element, and organize the library with manage_elements (rename, duplicate, favorite, delete, export and import bundles).
  • Profile library. export_asset_curve draws a profile so the assistant can look at it before choosing it. manage_assets renames, duplicates, sets the default and deletes. Every *profile argument also accepts "id:<n>".
  • Smart Profiles. create_smart_profile sweeps profile sections along a curve, and edit_object edits them section by section.
  • Editable components. Bails, named pendants, bangles, beads, charms, links, milgrain, ropes, 3D textures and ring engravings can be edited after creation with edit_object, by path ({"top_profile.width": 4.5}).
  • Richer edit_object. It now calls a handle’s edit methods too (set_section, add_section, fit_to_gem…). describe_object_parameters lists them as calls.
  • Cutters that fit the stone. create_cutters takes fit_to_gem for fancy cuts. A redesigned create_bail exposes every option of the Bail panel.
  • Panels. close_panel closes a command panel that run_command left open.

The Tools page lists everything.

How it works

AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, …)
    │  Model Context Protocol (localhost only)
    ▼
RhinoArtisan MCP bridge  ──►  RhinoArtisan  ──►  your document
  • Included with RhinoArtisan 7 — nothing extra to install.
  • The bridge runs entirely on your machine: it listens on localhost only and is never exposed to the network.
  • Tools execute through RhinoArtisan itself — same pipelines as the UI tools, same licensing, same friendly error messages.
  • Read-only tools (listing gems, discovering valid shapes and materials) are separated from tools that modify the document, so assistants can explore safely before they act.

Why it matters

A jeweler’s AI assistant is only as good as the tools it can use. MCP turns RhinoArtisan into a first-class tool for any capable agent — today for early experiments, tomorrow as the standard way AI works alongside professional software.

Ready to try it? Head to Getting Started, then see Tools for what the toolset covers today. Have a workflow in mind? Talk to us.