sweethome3d-mcp

sweethome3d-mcp is a local stdio MCP server for creating and editing Sweet Home 3D .sh3d projects on disk. It operates directly on Home.xml inside the ZIP archive so an LLM can add, inspect, validate, export, and delete supported plan elements without a running Sweet Home 3D instance.

This is a personal/community project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or maintained by eTeks or the Sweet Home 3D project.

Verified against Sweet Home 3D version: 7.9.303.0 (eTeks.SweetHome3D_7.9.303.0_x64, Microsoft Store package)

License

This repository is released under the MIT License. The schema-research provenance for docs/SCHEMA.md and the rationale for using MIT in this repository are documented in NOTICE.md.

Related MCP server: solidworks-mcp

Credits / Author

Author: Stanley S Nelavala
GitHub: consultantstanleymn

Install

pip install -e .

Run the server with:

python -m sh3d_mcp

MCP Client Registration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sweethome3d": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "sh3d_mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PYTHONPATH": "C:\\Users\\stanl\\Desktop\\sweethome3d-mcp\\src"
      }
    }
  }
}

Worked Example

Example tool sequence for an 8 m × 6 m home with one interior wall, two rooms, one table, one dimension line, and a final export:

create_project(
    project_path="house.sh3d",
    name="House",
    width=800.0,
    height=600.0,
)

add_wall(
    project_path="house.sh3d",
    x1=400.0,
    y1=7.5,
    x2=400.0,
    y2=592.5,
    join=False,
)

add_room(
    project_path="house.sh3d",
    points=[(7.5, 7.5), (400.0, 7.5), (400.0, 592.5), (7.5, 592.5)],
    name="Living Room",
    allow_overlap=True,
)

add_room(
    project_path="house.sh3d",
    points=[(400.0, 7.5), (792.5, 7.5), (792.5, 592.5), (400.0, 592.5)],
    name="Dining Room",
    allow_overlap=True,
)

add_furniture(
    project_path="house.sh3d",
    catalog_id="eTeks#table",
    x=596.25,
    y=300.0,
    room_name="Dining Room",
)

add_dimension(
    project_path="house.sh3d",
    x1=7.5,
    y1=620.0,
    x2=792.5,
    y2=620.0,
    offset=20.0,
)

export_project(project_path="house.sh3d")

All tool lengths are in centimetres. Tool rotations are in degrees. Plan coordinates use x increasing to the right. The exact positive on-screen rotation handedness and independent y-axis direction remain unverified because the tested Sweet Home 3D install had a broken 2-D plan view; see docs/SCHEMA.md §9-B.

Limitations

• Single level only.

• No doors or windows bound to walls.

• No lights.

• No textures, materials, or colour authoring.

• No rendering or export to OBJ, PNG, or SVG.

• No live sync with a running Sweet Home 3D application.

• Output format is .sh3d only.

Tool Surface

The server currently registers these tools:

• create_project

• add_wall

• add_room

• add_furniture

• add_dimension

• list_elements

• export_project

• open_reference

• validate_project

• delete_element

Known Issues / Open Questions

These are still genuinely open and will also be tracked as GitHub issues for contributors:

• Rotation handedness and y-axis direction: 90° rotation magnitude and width/depth axis swap are confirmed in real Sweet Home 3D, but exact clockwise-vs-counterclockwise handedness and independent y-down confirmation remain unverified because the tested install's 2-D plan view was blank. This is the highest-value open item because it affects the precise semantics of rotation and some geometry interpretation. See docs/SCHEMA.md §9-B.

• Modern Home.CURRENT_VERSION integer: the project currently writes the known-safe 5300 value from a 2017 source mirror because lower is safer than accidentally claiming a newer unsupported version. The actual current integer for modern Sweet Home 3D still needs confirmation from newer source or a verified file sample. See docs/SCHEMA.md §9-C.

• Colour attribute encoding: colour authoring is not implemented yet, and the exact accepted wire format for colour attributes still needs direct confirmation. The current docs note decimal-or-hex uncertainty and intentionally defer the feature. See docs/SCHEMA.md §9-D.

• ContentDigests necessity: the implementation intentionally omits ContentDigests on write because Home.xml loads without it in source analysis, but it is still not fully proven whether a real Sweet Home 3D open ever requires it in any edge case. See docs/SCHEMA.md §9-F.

• Multi-level support: multi-floor homes remain out of scope for v1 and would be a substantial feature rather than a small patch. The format details around levels and elevationIndex also remain under-investigated. See docs/SCHEMA.md §9-K.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for practical development setup and conventions. Longer-form contributor notes and project summaries will live in the repository Wiki under wiki/.

Attribution

The Home.xml schema notes in docs/SCHEMA.md were derived from Sweet Home 3D's published DTD and GPL-licensed source code. This project does not bundle Sweet Home 3D itself.