Hi @clemense @stephane-caron , thanks for your work and to all the contributors. I came across your project by coincidence, and I think you might want to take a look at liburdf, a project I was working on back in 2024 when I was in the robotics field. It’s basically a parser and generator of urdf files written in pure modern c++.
as I remember, I faced a lot of issues with the ros-urdf packages and urdf tools back then. Many of them depend on ros (which I personally dislike), and they fail in handling complex or parallel mechanisms., generating these files from pure mesh files or CAD was also very painful and often required licensed software. so, I started writing my own parser + generator + visualizer. As I recall, I only implemented the parser (tested on some files and it worked fine), but the internal graph representation of the library still needs attention. I also wrote an experimental version of a 3d renderer with VTK, but since it was very heavy, the project (then called tinyurdf ) was removed.
recently, I re-uploaded it on gitLab, cleaned some cmake files, and added bazel build files for people who are not familiar with cmake. The generator part (using Assimp) is not implemented, sadly.
Liburdf is not currently in my priority queue as I switched fields and am working on other projects. That’s why I hope someone finds it and continues my work, or builds a small community around it. It could become a great cross-platform open-source tool, especially if integrated with common ides like Vscode.
I know that some other tools exist in other languages, like urdf-vis, but not a comprehensive c++ one as far as I remember.
Please take a look at the project. I am open to any discussion about liburdf if you or any other member is interested.
Hi @clemense @stephane-caron , thanks for your work and to all the contributors. I came across your project by coincidence, and I think you might want to take a look at liburdf, a project I was working on back in 2024 when I was in the robotics field. It’s basically a parser and generator of urdf files written in pure modern c++.
as I remember, I faced a lot of issues with the ros-urdf packages and urdf tools back then. Many of them depend on ros (which I personally dislike), and they fail in handling complex or parallel mechanisms., generating these files from pure mesh files or CAD was also very painful and often required licensed software. so, I started writing my own parser + generator + visualizer. As I recall, I only implemented the parser (tested on some files and it worked fine), but the internal graph representation of the library still needs attention. I also wrote an experimental version of a 3d renderer with VTK, but since it was very heavy, the project (then called tinyurdf ) was removed.
recently, I re-uploaded it on gitLab, cleaned some cmake files, and added bazel build files for people who are not familiar with cmake. The generator part (using Assimp) is not implemented, sadly.
Liburdf is not currently in my priority queue as I switched fields and am working on other projects. That’s why I hope someone finds it and continues my work, or builds a small community around it. It could become a great cross-platform open-source tool, especially if integrated with common ides like Vscode.
I know that some other tools exist in other languages, like urdf-vis, but not a comprehensive c++ one as far as I remember.
Please take a look at the project. I am open to any discussion about liburdf if you or any other member is interested.