Professional Engineering Consultants in Wichita used Autodesk Platform Services to build an MCP server so engineers can ask questions of a project's drawings, schedules and meeting transcripts before quality control reviews. The firm estimates it saves about an hour per project; it is in beta on around 10% of projects, and it caught an unresolved voltage discrepancy that had no documented fix. A real AI win at an engineering firm is small and specific.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright designated helium a critical material under the Energy Act of 2020, citing its role in semiconductor manufacturing and advanced energy technology. The move opens more federal financing to helium producers. Helium comes out of natural gas processing, so a chip supply worry lands on gas producers and processors.
An unofficial MCP server on the SOLIDWORKS COM API sketches parts, builds assemblies, makes drawings, exports STEP and DXF and runs static stress studies, with failed features rolled back. The author rebuilt it after finding about 115 of 187 tools in an earlier server broken or silently wrong.
For mechanical and design engineers on SOLIDWORKS: note the README warns screenshots and geometry go to the model provider.
The student kit gives 280 buildings with floor plans and equipment lists, a starter agent and a scorer, and asks teams to find equipment and route people around closed areas. The split is right: the agent talks, a deterministic graph of rooms and doors does the routing.
For facility and plant engineering teams: a template for site navigation agents.
