Talking to ETABS in Natural Language: ETABSSharp + MCP

What if you could ask your AI assistant:

“What’s the maximum story drift in load case EQ-X? Is it within the 0.5% limit?”

And it would query your open ETABS model, run the check, and answer — without you writing a single line of code?

That’s what ETABSSharp + MCP enables.

What is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants (Claude, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, etc.) call external tools through a defined interface.

Instead of copy-pasting data into a chat window, the AI can directly invoke tools — query a database, run a calculation, read a file — and use the results in its response.

The ETABSSharp MCP server

The MCP server exposes ETABSSharp methods as tools that any MCP-compatible AI client can call:

{
  "tools": [
    {
      "name": "get_story_drifts",
      "description": "Get story drift results for all load cases",
      "inputSchema": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "loadCase": { "type": "string", "description": "Optional filter by load case name" }
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "get_frame_forces",
      "description": "Get axial, shear, and moment for frame elements"
    },
    {
      "name": "run_analysis",
      "description": "Run the structural analysis on the current model"
    }
  ]
}

A real workflow

With Claude Desktop configured to use the ETABSSharp MCP server:

Me: “Check if any story in EQ-X exceeds the 0.5% drift limit”

Claude (calling get_story_drifts):

Story drift results for EQ-X:

Level 1: 0.28% ✓

Level 2: 0.41% ✓

Level 3: 0.53% ⚠️ exceeds 0.5% limit

Level 4: 0.38% ✓

Level 3 exceeds the limit by 0.03%. You may want to review the lateral stiffness at that level — either increasing column sizes or adding a shear wall at that story.

The AI didn’t just read a number — it applied engineering judgement to the result.

How to set it up

1. Install ETABSSharp

dotnet add package ETABSSharp

2. Run the MCP server

etabssharp-mcp --port 3000

This starts the MCP server and connects to the running ETABS instance on your machine.

3. Configure Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "etabs": {
      "command": "etabssharp-mcp",
      "args": ["--port", "3000"]
    }
  }
}

Now Claude can see your ETABS model.

What this changes

The bottleneck in structural engineering isn’t analysis — it’s interpretation. Running 50 load combinations takes seconds. Checking which members fail and why takes hours.

An AI that can query results, apply code checks, and explain what it finds changes that ratio significantly.

ETABSSharp + MCP is early-stage. The tool set is small. But the direction is clear.

GitHub: github.com/tadoEng/etabssharp