Hello i am working on some robotics projects and i do my modeling in FreeCAD.
I am playing around with the idea of a URDF workbench, I will be a kind of a simple subset of a assembly workbench.
I would like to build the URDF model in 3 steps,
1. create a link (http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/XML/link)
Either just create a pad from a dialog with h,w,l and some other parameters or use the bounding box of a existing FreeCAD model or mesh format file.
2. add joint(s) to the link (http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/XML/joint)
Visualize joint as a sphere with a disc in the middle. only 1 dim rotational joints to start with. disc shows rotation and can be a half moon to show a 180 degree joint.
3. mate a joint from the new link with a joint from a previous link (if it exists).
Then you repeat the steps until you save it as urdf (http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/XML/model)
this is an example of a simple URDF:
http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/Tutorials/Buil ... %20Scratch
I have started with the basics but i would like to hear some points on how i should implement this the best way? I think the new part design object structure might make this a lot easier.
Also can i save the project file as some kind of freecad format file? i think i might be able to use some of the code that is used in assembly2.
As a bonus, it would be great if i could play around with the degrees of freedom and do collision checks between two link meshes. I tested http://solvespace.com/ the other day and it was very cool to be able to trace a point and do collision checking of joints, will have to look at that code.