I forked this repo from syuntoku14 who did a super work. During the usage of the original package some restriction hit me quite hard. I decided to add some new features to the package like handling nested components and colors.
Hope you enjoy the new features!
This repo only supports Gazebo, if you are using pybullet, see: https://github.com/yanshil/Fusion2PyBullet.
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2021/10/13: Version 1.2
- Made the color and material detection more robust
- Added ROS 2 launchfile generator
- Dialog Popup to choose between ROS 1 and ROS 2
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2021/03/09: version 1.1
- Fix FusionAPI Change
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2021/01/23: Version 1.0
- This version can handle now nested components
- The bodies and components which should be exported can be choosen via the light bulbs in Fusion 360
- Joints with disabled light bulb will be ignored and not exported to the urdf file
- Hopefully final bugfix of the joint coordinates calculation
- Reading out the color of the component and set it in the material file
- All changes are done in a temporary file, so no backup of your design file is necessary (but it is still a good idea) This means that also linked components can be used
- Added two example Fusion 360 files, which can be found in the Example folder
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2021/01/09: Fix xyz calculation.
- If you see that your components move arround the map center in rviz try this update
- More Infos see: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-api-and-scripts/difference-of-geometryororiginone-and-geometryororiginonetwo/m-p/9837767
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2020/11/10: README fix
- MacOS Installation command fixed in README
- Date format unified in README to yyyy/dd/mm
- Shifted Installation Upwards for better User Experience and easier to find
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2020/01/04: Multiple updates:
- no longer a need to run a bash script to convert stls
- some cleanup around joint and transmission generation
- defines a sample material tag instead of defining a material in each link
- fusion2urdf now generates a self-contained ROS {robot_name}_description package
- now launched by roslaunch {robot_name}_description display.launch
- changed fusion2urdf output from urdf to xacro for more flexibility
- separate out material, transmissions, gazebo elements to separate files
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2018/20/10: Fixed functions to generate launch files
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2018/25/09: Supports joint types "Rigid", "Slider" & Supports the joints' limit(for "Revolute" and "Slider").
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2018/19/09: Fixed the bugs about the center of the mass and the inertia.
Run the following command in your shell.
cd <path to fusion2urdf>
Copy-Item ".\URDF_Exporter\" -Destination "${env:APPDATA}\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\API\Scripts\" -Recursecd <path to fusion2urdf>
cp -r ./URDF_Exporter "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/API/Scripts/"This is a fusion 360 script to export urdf from fusion 360 directly.
This exports:
- .urdf file of your model
- .launch and .yaml files to simulate your robot on gazebo
- .stl files of your model
The following test model doesn't stand upright because the z axis is not upright in default fusion 360. Make sure z axis is upright in your fusion 360 model if you want.
- center of mass
- collision
- inertia
Before using this script, make sure that your model has all the "links" as components. You have to define the links by creating corresiponding components. For example, this model(https://grabcad.com/library/spotmini-robot-1) is not supported unless you define the "base_link".
In addition to that, you should be careful when define your joints. The parent links should be set as Component2 when you define the joint, not as Component1. For example, if you define the "base_link" as Component1 when you define the joints, an error saying "KeyError: base_link__1" will show up.
Also, make sure components of your model has only bodies. Nested components are not supported.
For example, this works:
but this doesn't work since the "face (3):1" component contains other components. A component must contain only bodies:
With the new version this should also work:
Nested components are exported as a single stl file. Therefore only joints on the root level will be taken into calculation!
Joints in nested components and on lower levels will be ignored. Only components and bodies with activated light bulb will be exported, components and bodies with deactivated light bulb will be ignored and not exported!
Joints which has a deactivated child component will be ignored. Deactivating the base_link will cause problems! Joints with deactivated light bulbs will not be exported!
Components connected through disabled joints will not be shown in RVIZ.
You can use asBuildJoints, but they will also ignored!
Colors which are defined on the root level components will be read out and taken over into the material definition of the urdf file.
Sometimes this script exports abnormal urdf without any error messages. In that case, the joints should have problems. Redefine the joints and run again.
In addition to that, make sure that this script currently supports only "Rigid", "Slider" and "Revolute".
DO NOT use Fusion 360's inbuilt joint editor dialouge for positioning joints
For example, @rohit-kumar-j had this complicated robot to assemble. There are over.. some 50 joints in all, including some forming loops within the structure like a 4-bar mechanism, also called kinematic loops.
As you can see below, when fusion initailly forms joints, it might not align where you want it to align to. In the image below, the cylinder's cap side doesn't exaclty coincide with the position of the pin where it needs to be join. The red arrow shows the mismatch in initial joint positioning by fusion.
If you were to manually drag the parts and align them as shown below, it would cause cascading problems with the visual and collision properties of certain links.
Below you can see one of the cylinders is mismatched as compared to the others (red and grey colors are cylinders) (The below urdf is visualized in pybullet)
See Also: Similar to this issue, but only for a few axes here (turns out there was a fusion API change back then, and the exporter wasn't yet updated See this commit, but it now is)
The fix for this is to leave Fusion's joint controls unedited and form joints for the robot joints (See below)
A similar issue with another set of joints at the ankle was fixed by following the above fromat. Here is the video
For spherical joints, it is better to keep them revolute and define the joints as spherical, later in the generated URDF(provided the urdf parser in your visualizer/physics engine(gazebo,webots,pybullet,mujoco,etc) supports spherical joints, in pybullet it does). The ankle joint below has 4 spherical joints and only two of them were defined as revolute while exporting from fusion 360. The other 2 spherical joints were created in pybullet using pybullet's inbuilt functions for creating kinematic loops.(see the gif below)
As an example, I'll export a urdf file from this cool fusion360 robot-arm model(https://grabcad.com/library/industrial-robot-10). This was created by sanket patil
Run the installation command in your shell.
Click ADD-INS in fusion 360, then choose fusion2urdf.
This script will change your model. So before running it, copy your model to backup.
Run the script and wait a few seconds(or a few minutes). Then a folder dialog will show up. Choose where you want to save the urdf (A folder "Desktop/test" is chosen in this example"). Maybe some error will occur when you run the script. Fix them according to the instruction. In this case, something wrong with joint "Rev 7". Probably it can be solved by just redefining the joint.
You must define the base component. Rename the base component as "base_link".
In the above image, base_link is grounded. Right-click it and click "Unground".
Now you can run the script. Let's run the script. Choose the folder to save and wait for a few seconds. You will see many "old_components" in the components field, please ignore them.
The script will generate a folder with the name of your Fusion design to meet the ROS naming requirements concated with "description"
You have successfully exported the urdf file. Also, you got .stl files in the "Desktop/test/mm_stl" repository.
You have successfully exported the urdf file. Also, you got stl files in "Desktop/test_description/meshes" repository.
This will be required at the next step. The existing fusion CAD file is no more needed. You can delete it.
The folder "Desktop/test" will be required in the next step. Move them into your ros environment. The folder "Desktop/test_description" will be required in the next step. Move them into your ros environment.
Place the generated _description package directory in your own ROS workspace. "catkin_ws" is used in this example. Then, run catkin_make in catkin_ws.
cd ~/catkin_ws/
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bashNow you can see your robot in rviz. You can see it by the following command.
roslaunch (whatever your robot_name is (lowercases))_description display.launch
If you want to simulate your robot on gazebo, just run
roslaunch (whatever your robot_name is(lowercase))_description gazebo.launchGazebo was not tested by me!
Enjoy your Fusion 360 and ROS life!
@misc{toshinori2020fusion2urdf,
author = {Toshinori Kitamura},
title = {Fusion2URDF},
year = {2020},
publisher = {GitHub},
journal = {GitHub repository},
howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/syuntoku14/fusion2urdf}}
}