Documentation

Installing ixScale, the two lookup tools beside the canvas, setting up an AI agent to drive it, and scripting.

Install and sign in

Download the installer for your platform from your account dashboard, then sign in from the app. A license lease lasts seven days and renews itself while you use the app, so ixScale keeps working offline between checks.

Lattice density lookup

Tools ▸ Lattice Density Lookup. Relative density and the geometric parameter that produces it — strut radius, or wall thickness for a TPMS — are related by a fitted curve per topology, and this tool converts between them in both directions. Type a density and it tells you the thickness; type a thickness and it tells you the density.

Pick the lattice family and type, give it the cell size, and drive whichever of the two you know. It is the fastest way to answer "what thickness do I need for 30% density at a 5 mm cell" without building the geometry and measuring it.

Homogenized properties lookup

Tools ▸ Homogenized Properties Lookup. A lattice's usable stiffness is not the stiffness of the material it is printed from. This tool gives you the effective stiffness of a lattice as a bulk material, which is what you need to model a latticed part without meshing every strut.

Give it:

• the lattice topology,
• the relative density,
• the base material's Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio.

It returns the homogenized stiffness matrix for that combination, read from a database of precomputed results and interpolated across density. Use it to choose a topology and density before you build the geometry, or to feed an equivalent-material model of a latticed part.

Set up an AI agent

An AI agent can build and edit your model for you: you describe the part — "a 40 mm cube filled with a gyroid, 30% dense, with a 2 mm skin" — and it creates and wires the cards, just as if you had done it by hand. Everything it does is ordinary, undoable edits in the open document, and you can watch the canvas change as it works.

ixScale works with Claude. There are three ways to connect it; pick the one that matches how you use Claude. Whichever you choose, AI control is off until you switch it on, under Tools ▸ AI Control… (the same window opens from Help ▸ Set Up AI Integration…), and ixScale has to be running with your document open: the agent drives the copy of ixScale in front of you.

1. The AI Agent panel inside ixScale

The quickest route. The AI Agent tab, docked at the bottom of the window beside the log, is a chat with Claude that is already connected to ixScale.

1. Install Claude Code, then open a terminal, run claude once and sign in. ixScale uses your own Claude subscription or API account.
2. In ixScale, open Tools ▸ AI Control… and tick Allow local AI control.
3. Click the AI Agent tab and type what you want built.

Right-click the transcript for New Session (start over with nothing remembered) or Clear Transcript.

2. Claude Code or the Claude desktop app

Use this if you already work in Claude Code in a terminal, or in the Claude desktop app. The connection stays on your computer — ixScale listens on a local socket that only your user account can reach, never on a network port, and nothing is sent anywhere.

1. Open Tools ▸ AI Control… and tick Allow local AI control.
2. Claude Code: under Connect Claude Code, click Copy and run the command in a terminal. It looks like this, with the path of your own installation filled in:

   claude mcp add ixscale -- "/Applications/ixScale.app/Contents/MacOS/ixscale_mcp"

   Then restart Claude Code — it reads its configuration only at startup.
3. Claude desktop app: click Register with Claude Desktop, install skill…, then quit and reopen Claude.
4. Click Test Connection to check ixScale answers.

The Register… button also installs the ixScale modeling skill, which teaches Claude how the cards behave — what each one needs, how to wire them, and the usual mistakes. It is worth doing for Claude Code too: the agent can connect without it, but builds better models with it.

3. claude.ai in a browser, from any device

Drive ixScale on your computer from claude.ai — including from a phone or another machine. ixScale connects out to your ixScale account; it never listens for incoming connections. What is sent is the commands, the names of your cards and document, and the replies. Geometry is never sent — no grids, meshes, STL or STEP.

Do these in this order:

1. In ixScale, open Tools ▸ AI Control… and tick Allow cloud AI control. The first time, ixScale asks you to accept the terms for cloud AI control. Your computer then appears under Computers connected now on the AI Control page of your account.
2. In claude.ai, open Settings ▸ Connectors, choose Add custom connector, and give it this URL:

   https://api.ixscale.com/mcp

   Claude asks you to sign in to your ixScale account and approve the connection.

Claude should then list three tools: ixscale_run, ixscale_scene and ixscale_guide.

From the cloud, commands that read or write files on your computer — save, load, import, export, screenshot — and those that end the session (new, quit) are refused unless you also tick Also allow file access in AI Control. You can see and revoke connected applications on the AI Control page of your account.

Working with the agent

• Describe the part, not the clicks. Sizes, the lattice you want and its density, loads and supports: the agent picks the cards.
• Everything is undoable. Each change is a normal edit, so Edit ▸ Undo takes back what you do not like.
• Long computations run in the app. Meshing, FEA and topology optimization run in ixScale as they would if you had started them, with the same progress and Cancel.
• Check the result. Ask the agent to measure the part or report its volume and density, and look at it in the viewport.

Scripting and AI

Everything the interface can do to a document, a text command can do too. The API drives the same card setters the GUI does, so scripted edits are undoable and range-checked exactly like typed ones — it is a second front-end onto the model, not a back door around it.

This is also how ixScale talks to an AI agent: the agent sends the same commands (see Set up an AI agent).

The API console and the AI Agent panel are docked at the bottom of the window, alongside the log.

Commands

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Limits and known edges

• Binary STL is the only mesh export format.
• Loading a document clears the undo stack.
• Face cards come from an imported STEP body: by picking in the viewport, or with the face / faces commands.
• The bounding box a card reports is not its true size. Use measure.

Something missing or wrong here? Tell us on the support page — documentation gaps are worth reporting.