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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.

Now on Mac

RhinoArtisan MCP runs on Rhino 8 and 9 for Mac too, inside RhinoArtisan for Mac: the same server, address and tool names as on Windows, so prompts and client setups carry over. Connect Claude Desktop with the Mac connector or ArtisanMcpConnectClaude; every other client connects to http://127.0.0.1:9280/mcp as usual.

A few things work differently on Mac:

  • Prices are offline. Certified diamonds are not quoted live on Nivoda when pricing (calculate_price, technical chart, breakdown export); the result says which stones have no quote.
  • Scripting. run_script runs Python with the RhinoArtisan Scripting API, under the same names as on Windows. The get_scripting_reference tool is not available on Mac yet; the reference is in the Scripting documentation.
  • Documents open in their own window. new_document and open_document open a new window; the previous document stays open.

What’s new in 7.1.6

  • Gems on the bridge. create_cathedral and create_advanced_cathedral take bridge_gems, bridge_gem_size and bridge_gems_count: stones on the two side faces of the bridge, apart from the row on the arms. They turn the bridge on, which then has no disc and no fillet and grows to the gem size plus 0.2 mm when it is thinner. edit_object tunes them later in the bridge_gems section (gem_size, prong_type, count, margin…); the setting is FLUSH, NONE (channel) or SHARED (prongs), never SCALLOPED (Cathedral, Advanced Cathedral).
  • Report templates on Rhino 9. create_report with a template now works on Rhino 9, on Windows and on Mac.
  • Bands stay editable on Mac. On Mac, create_eternity, create_plain_band, create_wedding_ring and create_contour_band save the band as one Artisan element with its parameters, and return its unique_id. Metal goes to the metal layer and stones to the gems layer.
  • Fixes on Mac. open_document waits for the new window instead of failing when the file takes a moment to load. The BANGLE dimensions say that the bangle has to be centred on the origin instead of failing without a reason. When a setting cannot be rebuilt after an edit, the result says which ones were left as they are.

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.
  • Gems on the basket rails. edit_object sets small stones on the outer face of a basket’s rails, between the prongs: {"upper_rail": {"gems": {"enabled": true, "gem_size": 1.0, "prong_type": "SHARED"}}}, and base_rail likewise (prong_type FLUSH, SHARED or SCALLOPED; gem_shape ROUND or SQUARE). {"upper_rail": {"mode": "SQUARE"}} gives a rail the square section on its own. On an advanced basket, rail_mode and rail_gems do the same on every rail. Windows only for now.
  • 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.
  • Multi-row pavé shank. create_pave_shank builds a band with 1 to 9 automatic rows of pavé, staggered, with a bead in every hollow (Pavé Shank).
  • Twisted shank. create_twisted_shank builds a solitaire band whose sides turn into two twisted strands, with plain shoulders, a plain back and a smooth inside (Twisted Shank).
  • Anniversary band. create_anniversary builds a row of stones in touching bezel cups that form the ring over the top, placed as on an eternity (full, half, three quarters, five, seven or nine stones), uniform or graduated (Anniversary).
  • Cluster centre prongs. create_cluster takes center_prongs, center_prong_mode, center_prong_type, center_prong_count, center_prong_diameter and center_prong_overlap: prongs of the centre stone’s own, the halo’s, on top of the ones it shares with the cluster stones.
  • Double, Triple and V prongs. add_basket_setting takes prong_type (SINGLE, DOUBLE, TRIPLE), overlap, and v_prongs with v_thickness / v_arm_length for a V on every sharp corner of the girdle. create_halo takes the same pairs for the center stone as center_prong_type and prong_overlap, and its claw is now the basket’s (edit_object tunes claw_gem_inside, claw_height, claw_tension, claw_on_curve). HEART and MARQUISE are halo shapes too.
  • Bezel seat and wall. add_bezel_setting takes seat_width (a bevel under the girdle that follows the pavilion), wall_angle and bottom_width; width no longer shapes the bezel.
  • Double hidden halo. create_hidden_halo takes second_channel and the second_channel_* values for a second ring under the first.
  • 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.