3dCMS Knowledge Base
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The AI Assistant

Meet the Assistant

A built-in chat panel where Claude makes real edits to your scene. Bring your own Anthropic key — it stays in your browser.

Open in the interactive manual →

The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.


The Assistant is a chat panel inside the editor where you describe what you want and Claude actually edits your scene — adding objects, recoloring, arranging, grouping. Each thing it does lands as a single, tidy Undo step, so you're always in control.

Bring your own key

The Assistant runs on your Anthropic API key, kept only in your browser and sent straight to Anthropic per request — it's never stored on the 3dCMS server.

  1. Get an Anthropic API key

    Create one at console.anthropic.com. (This is the pay-as-you-go API, separate from a Claude subscription.)

  2. Paste it into Settings

    Open Settings ▸ AI Assistant and paste the key (it starts with sk-ant-). It saves as you type.

  3. Open the Assistant

    Windows ▸ Assistant. It flips out of its placeholder state the moment a key is present — no reload needed.

What it costs You pay Anthropic directly, and it's cents-scale — a typical edit is about 1–2¢ on the default Sonnet model. Letting it see the viewport adds a fraction of a cent per message. (This is different from AI generation, which spends real dollars on a separate fal.ai key — that's opt-in and off by default.)

Prefer to drive 3dCMS from Claude Desktop or Claude Code on your existing subscription instead? That's the MCP server.

AI keys at a glance

3dCMS has three independent AI features, each with its own key and its own setup page — so if you're hunting for the right one to paste:

FeatureKeySet it up in…
In-editor Assistant (this page)Anthropic API key — sk-ant-…Settings ▸ AI Assistant (steps above)
AI generation — new models & materialsfal.ai key — key_id:key_secretTurning on AI generation
Drive from Claude Desktop / Code3dCMS token — tdcms_…Generate a token, then connect Claude

The Anthropic and fal keys live only in your browser; the tdcms_… token authorizes Claude from outside the editor (the server keeps just a hash of it).

Spotted something off, or want a topic covered? Email buck.rackley@gmail.com.