I'm interested in developing a custom manipulator, and I wanted to do some iterative studies on link lengths and joint limits by seeing what the resulting reach envelope/workspace is.

Are there any tools in ROS that can help create something like this?

I came across this video of a robot in VREP doing something very similar to what I'm interested in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOPJyDKMWrQ