Blender3d Collision Physics Simulator

[Whippet]

I've been designing my team's robots like this since the 2013 season and is really a mixed bag. This year, I imported STL versions if the KOP totes and recycling containers and tried to get my designs to work. The problem is that Blender's physics engine works best with very simple meshes with primarily rectangular or spherical features. I found that no matter how I configured the simulator, I could not get my correctly-sized hook to not clip through the tote/container and drop it just because it how complex the collision meshes were. On the other hand, Blender was perfect last year for designing a launcher/catcher, as the game piece was an easy-to-simulate near perfect sphere. Actually, this year's game was, IMO, one of the hardest in a long time to simulate in Blender. It's your call, but my team is going to make the switch to Inventor this year because we decided Blender just wasn't worth the trouble.

EDIT: I still have the last 2 years of Blender files sitting on my hard drive. If you PM me your email address, I can send you some examples.

[MikLast]

What you may try is importing the .FBX files into Unily3D. While i haven't touched Unity in a while, you should be able to quickly rig it up so testing shouldn't be that hard.

(Also, you could stick with the Autodesk line and build it in inventor and export that to their physics engine (If they have one?)