onshape-to-robot

Open-source tool that exports robot assemblies built in Onshape directly into URDF or MJCF files.

onshape-to-robot is an open-source Python tool from the Rhoban team at the University of Bordeaux, France. Robot structures are often designed in CAD software, but simulators and ROS need robot description files such as URDF, SDF, or MJCF, and manually transcribing links, joints, mass, and inertia from a CAD model is slow and error-prone. This tool reads an assembly through the API of Onshape, a cloud-based CAD platform, identifies joints from a naming convention, and automatically generates the description files and meshes, including mass and inertia data. Open-hardware projects commonly use it to move a design straight into simulators like MuJoCo or PyBullet.

ExampleName the joint mates in Onshape something like dof_knee, run onshape-to-robot, and get an MJCF file plus STL meshes ready to load directly into MuJoCo.

Related

Unified Robot Description Format · MJCF (MuJoCo XML Format) · SolidWorks to URDF Exporter · CAD Software (SolidWorks / Onshape / Fusion 360) · Mesh File (STL / OBJ / DAE / glTF) · Simulation Description Format (SDFormat)

Sources

Rhoban/onshape-to-robot (GitHub)