Claude, Meet Fusion 360: Designing a Plant Pot with MCP

Somebody wrote a Fusion 360 MCP plugin that enables Claude (or any MCP enabled agent) to fully control Fusion360. Sketches, extrusions, bodies, rendering, exporting, file management, etc….

I had Claude install it. Once Claude installed and confirmed it was working, it asked, “What do you want to build?”

“How about starting with something simple? A flower pot ideal for a Stapelia variegata.”¹

How Claude Responded

Claude summarized the design requirements as follows. Spot on!

• Stapelia spread horizontally, not vertically. They’re ground-hugging succulents with thick, angular stems that branch outward. So the pot needed to be wide and shallow, not tall and narrow.
• Drainage is critical. Stapelia are extremely rot-prone. Sitting in wet soil will kill them faster than almost anything else. Thus, tons of drainage.
• The stems drape over pot edges. The soft, fleshy stems would be destroyed by any sharp edges on the rim.

The Design

Claude drove Fusion 360 through the MCP to create a pot with a gentle outward-curving taper via a spline profile, rendered in a terracotta appearance. The dimensions:

• ~14cm top diameter, ~10cm bottom diameter, 8cm tall
• 0.4cm wall thickness
• Rounded rim (0.2cm fillet) so the soft stems aren’t damaged where they drape over the edge
• Bottom chamfer for style points

That’s quite a bit more drainage than I’d likely have found at the local pot store! Critical to keep root rot at bay for this particular succulent.

The Workflow

All in all, a very productive, quick, workflow. I certainly could have designed said pot in F360, though it would have been a challenge for me as I’m somewhere around the “barely able to muddle my way to success” level of skill.

There are some clear design improvements to be made. And it will be interesting to see how well Claude handles added complexity or revisions.

Next step: print it and see if the Stapelia approves.