Should I choose to write a URDF manually or export URDF by Solidworks?

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I first tried to use SW to URDF and had many problems with meshes coordinates, and some other problems I don't remember now.

By the time I almost fixed everything I had a good understanding of how URDF was working, and I discovered xacro. Now I am only using xacro to produce my URDF.

Some points against using this SW to URDF :

• everytime you update your file on Solidworks you need to export everything again. In my case I am running Ubuntu on my computer, and am not the one doing the mechanical design. It means I had to install SW on my Windows, and everytime I had to change something I had to restart my computer, go to Windows, run the plugin, etc, etc.

• The development of the plugin is not supported anymore

• One day you will need to debug something in your URDF. It will be harder if you don't know how it's made

• With this plugin you can't use xacro, which is a great tool and will save you some time in the future

The SW to URDF plugin has both positive points and negative points. I think it can be very useful in some cases. But personally, from my experience, I would suggest to create a xacro file instead of using the plugin.