How to, stl in rviz and gazebo?

Question

This may be a very newbie question, however I am somewhat struggling with it. I have got an stl file (from Google SketchUp), how should I get it into rviz and gazebo ?

UPDATE 1 I have been exactly following this tutorial, everything works but rviz is blank. I used Google SketchUp 8 for making the stl file.

UPDATE 2 a dae file works fine, but stl gives the following error;

[rviz-3] process has died [pid 8132, exit code -11].

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Originally posted by Arkapravo on ROS Answers with karma: 1108 on 2012-02-11

Post score: 3

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Original comments

Comment by hsu on 2012-02-11:
Hi Arkapravo, I'll take some random guesses here... make sure to also export the stl mesh package path to ROS_PACKAGE_PATH in the same terminal rviz was launched. Also, note that stl has to be in binary format. As general suggestion, please post commands used, stl and urdf if possible. Thanks.

Answer 1

stl files can be used as geometry description in urdf files. So basically what you need is a model. You can look at the urdf tutorials if you don't know how to create one: look here. At the end of the linked page is an example that uses a mesh file (that's what your stl is).

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Originally posted by Kai Bublitz with karma: 357 on 2012-02-11

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 2

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Original comments

Comment by Arkapravo on 2012-02-11:
@Kai Bublitz Yes, I am using that, rviz doesn't find the stl, I am not sure if is it a path issue (it is in the same folder); hence I was doubting if it is the issue of the stl

Comment by Kai Bublitz on 2012-02-11:
How are you trying to view the model? Do you use the display.launch from urdf_tutorial? Does rviz show any error messages?

Comment by Arkapravo on 2012-02-11:
@Kai Bublitz I have been doing exactly this ! ..... but nothing appears in the visualisation ! ..... rviz is blank !