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Ask an AI assistant or call the WebAPI

Describes RotoSpider Web App 0.8.13 and Desktop 0.8.13 · checked 2026-09-13 D5

RotoSpider's layout engine can be asked without opening RotoSpider at all: by an AI assistant that talks to it over MCP, or by your own software over a web API. Both answer the same question the apps answer, whether a set of molds fits an arm and how, and both are public evaluation services today. This page says what each is for and where the details are; the site's own pages carry the connection steps, the schemas and the sample code, and they are kept current with the service.

An AI assistant, over MCP

An assistant that supports remote MCP servers (the Model Context Protocol) can collect mold sizes, quantities and arm details in conversation, then call RotoSpider for the physical answer instead of guessing from the text. RotoSpider stays responsible for whether the molds fit; the assistant organises the inputs and explains the result.

The connection is one custom MCP server, Streamable HTTP, at:

https://www.rotospider.com/roto/mcp

Name it "RotoSpider" in the assistant's connector settings, then ask with dimensions and units: shape, size, how many, and the arm or a public sample machine. The assistant asks for what is missing, such as the clearance. What comes back is a checkable layout answer: whether every requested mold was placed, requested and placed counts by mold, clearance and spider use, the riser chosen on an offset or L arm, and placement coordinates tied to the arm.

The site's MCP page has the three connection steps, an example question and the working boundary: the assistant should not infer that molds fit from names or prose, invent machine dimensions, or treat the public sample machines as your factory's data.

Your own software, over the WebAPI

A layout check is one HTTPS request with a JSON body:

POST https://www.rotospider.com/roto/api/layout/check

Send the molds as boxes or cylinders with their dimensions, or as an exact prepared shape by its identity, with either a public sample machine or your own arm's geometry (straight or offset, spider, envelope, risers). You get back whether the request is complete, requested and placed counts, clearance, utilisation, the riser choice, the arm geometry used and the placement coordinates. Lengths are explicit millimetre fields on a 0.001 mm grid, or inch fields by name; the result's physical values are in millimetres.

Exact shapes are built once and then referenced: one request publishes a built shape (an L, a triangle, a wedge, a tapered cylinder or a drawn footprint) or imports a prepared .rotogeom or .rotoshape file, and returns the identity to send with the mold. Raw STEP files are not accepted by the service; a STEP file is prepared on the Windows desktop app, as the import page describes, and its portable package is what the API takes.

The site's WebAPI page carries the contract, the OpenAPI description and the developer preview samples: matching millimetre and inch requests with Python, JavaScript, curl and PowerShell clients you can run as they are.

Before you rely on either

Both services are for evaluation. They are rate-limited, have no production service level, and their schemas are still moving. Do not send confidential orders or master data to the public services until data handling and access have been agreed for your integration; the contact page is where that conversation starts. A factory integration brings its own machine, arm and spider geometry, its mold master data and its planning rules, and agrees versioning, capacity and access first.