Working with a 3D model of the robot using Blender

In this section, we will design the 3D model of the robot. The 3D model is mainly used for simulation purposes. The modeling will be done using Blender. The version must be greater than 2.6 because we only tested the tutorials on these versions.

The following screenshot shows the Blender workspace and tools that can be used to work with 3D models:

Blender 3D CAD tools

The main reason why we are using Blender here is that we can model the robot using Python scripts. Blender has an inbuilt Python interpreter and a Python script editor for coding purposes. We will not discuss the user interface of Blender here. You can find a good tutorial of Blender on its website. Refer to the following link to learn about Blender's user interface:
http://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/.

Let's start coding in Blender using Python.