InventorBridge

Help AI agents work with Autodesk Inventor.

A bridge between AI agents (Claude Code, Codex and other MCP clients) and Autodesk Inventor: API documentation designed for agents and an MCP server that lets an agent drive the Inventor you have open.

Independent project, not affiliated with Autodesk. Autodesk and Inventor are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.

What exists today

• API reference for Inventor 2024 to 2027, generated from the interop DLLs:
  • one page per object and per enum, with the interface in pseudo-C#;
  • COM inheritance ("ExtrudeFeature inherits from PartFeature"), which the interop does not show;
  • an example path from Application to each object;
  • what returns each object and where each enum is used;
  • a // since 20xx mark on members that do not exist in every version;
  • members.tsv, one member per line, for grep.
• The reference generator (src/InventorBridge.ReferenceGenerator).
• MCP server (src/InventorBridge.Mcp, first version): connects Claude Code, Codex or any MCP client to the Inventor running on your computer. The agent writes C# against the Inventor API, the server runs it inside Inventor, and you watch the result in your own Inventor window. The agent looks up the API with api_lookup instead of guessing names, and reads short guides served by the server.

The full plan is in ARCHITECTURE.md.

Using it with Claude Code

Requirements: Windows, Autodesk Inventor 2024 or later, and the .NET 8 SDK.

1. Clone the repository and build the server. It references Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll from the Inventor 2024 installation (or from lib/inventor/2024/, see below):

   dotnet build src/InventorBridge.Mcp -c Release

2. Register it in Claude Code for every folder (adjust the path to where you cloned it):

   claude mcp add inventor --scope user -- C:\path\to\InventorBridge\src\InventorBridge.Mcp\bin\Release\net8.0-windows\InventorBridge.Mcp.exe

3. Open Inventor, open Claude Code and ask, for example: "create a new assembly with two tubes and a 90° bend, and connect the three".

Tool	What it does
inventor_status	Connects to the Inventor you have open: version, active project and workspace folder, default templates, open documents
inventor_start	Starts Inventor (visible) when it is not running, and waits until it is ready
run_csharp	Compiles and runs a C# script against the Inventor API. It runs as one undo step on the active document and is rolled back on an error; compilation errors come back with line and column. The result lists what changed (documents, features, occurrences, constraints), and an optional expect checks volume, size, bodies, occurrences or free degrees of freedom
script_result	Waits for a script that was still running after 60 s and returns its result
inspect	Structured summary of the active document: features and parameters of a part, occurrences, constraints and free degrees of freedom of an assembly, sheets of a drawing
topology	Faces and edges of a part or of one occurrence, with positions, cylinder axes and circle centers in mm, so a script can pick them; split cylinders are merged with their ends
screenshot	An image of the Inventor view, so the agent sees what you see
api_lookup	Looks up the API reference: an object's or enum's page, some members of a type, or a search by name. It hides members that the running Inventor version does not have, and works without Inventor
guide	Short guides: the workflow, parts, assemblies and constraints, API pitfalls

Inventor must stay open while the agent works: the server talks to it through COM, out of process, so nothing is installed inside Inventor.

Generating the reference

The Autodesk interop DLLs are not in the repository. Put one per version at lib/inventor/<year>/Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll:

Version	Where to get it
2024 and earlier	The Inventor installation: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor <year>\Bin\Public Assemblies\
2025 and later	The interop downloads page on Autodesk support ("Inventor Interop binary files")

Then, from the repository root (requires the .NET 8 SDK):

dotnet run --project src/InventorBridge.ReferenceGenerator

The generator does not run Inventor and does not need it installed: it only reads the DLLs' metadata. Building InventorBridge.Mcp copies the generated pages next to the server, for api_lookup.

Tests

dotnet test

The tests do not need Inventor. They cover the API lookup, the guides (every C# example must compile as a run_csharp script), script compilation, and the server itself: they start it over stdio and check that every tool declares all four MCP hints. Like the build, they need Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll, from the Inventor 2024 installation or lib/inventor/2024/.

Layout

src/InventorBridge.Mcp/
  Connection/  COM connection: STA thread, retry of busy calls, attaching to or starting Inventor
  Scripting/   compiling and running run_csharp scripts (Roslyn), transactions
  Reading/     inventor_status, inspect and screenshot
  Reference/   api_lookup and guide: serving the reference and the guides
  Tools/       the MCP tools
src/InventorBridge.ReferenceGenerator/
  Reading/     reading the DLLs and inheritance.txt
  Model/       per-version model and combined model
  Analysis/    version merging, inheritance, reverse indexes, access paths
  Output/      Markdown pages, index, members.tsv and JSON
  inheritance.txt   derived/base pairs extracted from the object model poster legend
docs/reference/     generated output (do not edit by hand)
docs/guides/        hand-written guides served by the guide tool
tests/InventorBridge.Mcp.Tests/   tests that run without Inventor
InventorInterop.props             where the build finds Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll
assets/             logo and social preview (SVG sources and PNG)
docs/cover.svg      README and portfolio image (rendered to docs/cover.png)

License

MIT. The license covers the code and documentation in this repository, not the DLLs or any other Autodesk material, which remain under Autodesk's own terms.