External URDF Package Support

[ranchhandrobotics]

Currently only packages within the current workspace are considered for rendering. This is due to not requiring ROS to be installed in order to edit a URDF or Xacro.

This work item is for cases where ROS is installed and your URDF refers to a package installed in ROS.

[davide-cappelletto]

i have a package with two files for a urdf visualization. one loads materials and inertia matrices, and the other one links and joints -the rest of the model. The extension provides a message telling me that the file with materials etc, cannot be loaded. Why is that?

[ranchhandrobotics]

@davide-cappelletto The URDF extension at the moment does not attempt to find other ROS workspaces including ROS itself when parsing URDF or Xacro files. I did this to support scenarios where ROS isn't installed. I don't have data on how impactful this decision would be, so was looking for feedback.

I'm happy to implement it; can you share more details on how your workspace is structured?

[davide-cappelletto]

Pacakges are located inside the /src folder of the workspace. A typical structure would be: /workspace/src/robot_package/urdf/

I do not know it if can be relevant, but the workspace I'm currently working on is built from a docker container.

I you need more infos, please ask. Such implementation would be very useful for ease of development.

[ranchhandrobotics]

This scenario should be supported today; I'll dig into it a bit more.

I am working on expanding my test cases here: https://github.com/Ranch-Hand-Robotics/rde-urdf/tree/eb544ed8ce2979b3df8b623e4cd5ff42dcd868fc/src/test/testdata

[ranchhandrobotics]

@davide-cappelletto for my reference - are you using the release build or the pre-release build?

[davide-cappelletto]

@ranchhandrobotics I'm using the release build, the only one found in the extension marketplace in vscode

[ranchhandrobotics]

@ranchhandrobotics I'm using the release build, the only one found in the extension marketplace in vscode

Thank you for the reply on that. The Pre-release build can be installed which should improve peer finding within a workspce.
I just submitted a feature to support loading from ROS itself if configured; which is done with the peer extension rde-ros-2.

(I need to refactor the rde-ros-2 extension to extract ROS utilities to share code; so now I'm just sharing settings)

[davide-cappelletto]

Thank you. I seems that I am not able to install such pre-release version, though. I am trying to do that from the estension page in vscode but it looks like the version I have installed is the only available one.

Here I'm pasting the error message the extension is giving me and the code part where the file inclusion is made. I apologize, I should have started with that.

[ranchhandrobotics]

Thanks for posting those screenshots, I see a case I haven't tested.
I'll have to look into why pre-release isn't available; are you using Visual Studio Code, or one of the forks?

[davide-cappelletto]

I'm using Visual Studio Code

[ranchhandrobotics]

This has been implemented as part of #57.
I'll release a new prerelease version. You can install it from the marketplace by using the "Switch to Pre-release":

I'll release it as 1.4.0 by EOW

[davide-cappelletto]

Thank you. I'll let you know how it performs as soon as possible.

[ranchhandrobotics]

@davide-cappelletto I wanted to check in and see if you tried this out