OpenSTAAD MCP Server

OpenSTAAD MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Bentley STAAD.Pro that enables AI agents like Claude Desktop, Gemini, or VSCode Copilot to interact with your STAAD.Pro models and perform various time-consuming tasks like load cases definition, data extraction, repetitive property setting and more.

This MCP server was introduced as part of Bentley's Infrastructure AI Co-Innovation Initiative to help our users and accounts discover opportunities and innovate faster, while connecting Bentley's unique engineering tool capabilities to their emerging agentic workflows.

Key Features

• Fast and flexible: Enjoy minimal latency, interact with every STAAD.Pro features covered by the OpenSTAAD API.
• AI-friendly: Provides documentation, guidance and feedback via dedicated tools to help your AI agent ramp up quickly on the STAAD.Pro API.
• Multi-instance support: Connects to multiple running STAAD.Pro instances simultaneously to parallelize tasks across models.
• Privacy-first: All processing happens locally on your machine. No data is sent to the cloud. No telemetry.

Prerequisites

• OS: Windows 11 or newer
• STAAD.Pro 2025 or newer installed and running

Quick Start with Claude Desktop (<2min)

1. Download the latest openstaad-mcp.mcpb file from the GitHub Releases page.
2. Open Claude Desktop.
3. Click the ☰ menu (top-left) → File → Settings → Extensions.
4. Click Advanced → Install Extensions.
5. Select the downloaded .mcpb file.
6. Click the ☰ menu (top-left) → File → Exit
7. Restart Claude Desktop.

Claude Desktop will install the server automatically. Open a new conversation and ask Claude to interact with your STAAD.Pro model.

Tip: Make sure STAAD.Pro is running with a model open before you start chatting.

Other Clients & Configuration

TL;DR:

If not already installed, install uv with the command:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Configure your client to start the server in stdio mode with the command:

uvx --from git+https://github.com/BentleySystems/openstaad-mcp openstaad-mcp

VS Code with GitHub Copilot

• For stdio: Open the Command Palette → MCP: Add Server... → Command (stdio) and enter the following command:

uvx --from git+https://github.com/BentleySystems/openstaad-mcp openstaad-mcp

• For http: First, start the server in a terminal:

uvx --from git+https://github.com/BentleySystems/openstaad-mcp openstaad-mcp --transport http

Look for the generated token and URL in the terminal output. It should look like this:

WARNING: No --token provided. Auto-generated token: abc123def456ghi789jkl012mno345pq
  INFO:  Starting MCP server 'OpenSTAAD MCP' with transport 'http' (stateless) on http://127.0.0.1:18120/mcp

Then, in VS Code, open the Command Palette → MCP: Add Server... → HTTP URL and enter the URL shown in the terminal (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:18120/mcp). 18120 is the default port, but yours may differ if you have multiple instances running or if you changed the default. Add the header Authorization: Bearer with the token shown in the MCP server terminal.

GitHub Copilot CLI

Use the /mcp add command inside a Copilot CLI session to add the server. See the Copilot CLI documentation for more details.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.