This is probably the best way to create the URDF file required for further physics modelling with Bullet/Gazebo.
Here’s the Bremen University link: https://robotik.dfki-bremen.de/en/research/softwaretools/phobos.html
https://github.com/dfki-ric/phobos/wiki/Installation
“As of release 0.8 of Phobos, we only support Blender 2.79. This means it will not function properly any more for older Blender versions and might not function with later versions; Blender 2.8 is expected to include major changes that will not be compatible with Phobos.”
https://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.79/
download
tar xvf blender-2.79b-linux-glibc219-x86_64.tar.gz
And install phobos…
git clone https://github.com/dfki-ric/phobos.git
python3 setup.py
https://github.com/dfki-ric/phobos/wiki/First-Steps
And then begin… https://github.com/dfki-ric/phobos/wiki/Modeling-Walkthrough
Essentially, what you want to build is a hierarchy of objects, parented to one another in such a way that pairs of objects can be connected with joints to represent the robot’s kinematics later on. For this purpose, it is easiest to build the robot in its rest pose, i.e. the way it will look like when all its joints are at their origin position.
So we need to plan the robot now.