[ODE] CAD to ODE?

[Bill Sellers]

Hi David,

I've done this a few times and its actually a real pain to get  
everything in the right coordinate system. My models get built in  
FormZ and I always end up doing quite a lot of geometry to get  
everything specified right (orientations, centres of mass, joints  
etc). I find it easier to keep everything in some global reference  
system but I still end up with issues about the orientations of the  
moments of inertia and the local coordinate systems of the segments.  
There's always some hand cleanup to do although if you can specify  
metadata in Pro/ENGINEER then that may help.

Cheers
Bill

On 21 Jun 2007, at 21:53, David Wilkie wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience bringing a CAD model int ODE?
>
> I have a CAD model of a robot, fairly complex, that I need to bring
> into a rigid-body dynamics simulator.  My current plan of attack is to
> write a COLLADA exporter for Pro/ENGINEER (under development
> currently) and then load that COLLADA model into a supporting
> simulator.
>
> Does anyone see any problem with this plan or know an easier way?
>
> Thanks,
> David
> _______________________________________________
> ODE mailing list
> ODE at ode.org
> http://ode.org/mailman/listinfo/ode