3 Getting StartedTop1 Introduction2 Installation

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2 Installation

The GraspIt! installation process consists of two steps. First, you must install a set of external libraries, listed below. The installation for each library is further detailed in the system specific sections of this installation guide. Then, you must compile the GraspIt! code itself and set up the environment variables.

GraspIt! needs the following external libraries:

Qt
Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework. It allows GraspIt! to have a platform-independent windowing system, dialogs etc. GraspIt! currently uses Qt version 4, which is available under two different licenses. This installer assumes you will be using the open source version, see the Qt website for more details on licensing options.
Coin
Coin is a Scene Graph API that GraspIt! uses for all of its 3D rendering needs. It is an Open Inventor clone. Like Qt, Coin is available under a dual licensing model; here we assume you will be using the open source license. See the Coin3D website for more licensing details.
SoQt
SoQt is a GUI binding, essentially the "glue" between Qt and Coin. It is available, under the same conditions as Coin, from the Coin website. The latest version of SoQt that we have tested GraspIt! with is SoQt 1.4.2, which provides seamless integration with Qt4.
Lapack
Lapack is a library for scientific computing that GraspIt! uses for various matrix related tasks, such as matrix multiplication, linear system solving, singular value decomposition, etc.

The GraspIt! project information comes in the form of a cross-platform Qt project file, which is processed by QMake. Depending on your system, you will convert this into either a Makefile or a Microsoft Visual Studio project file.

2.1 GraspIt! Installation - Ubuntu Linux

Qt

You will need the following libraries in order to compile GraspIt!:

On Ubuntu, you should be able to get all these from the package manager. It should also possible to compile them all from code, but since that tends to be system-specific we no longer provide instructions or guidelines for that.

Use sudo apt-get install to install the following packages:

GraspIt!

Download and unzip the GraspIt! code itself. Set the following environment variable:

Create the GraspIt! Makefile from the Qt project file. Edit $GRASPIT/graspit.pro to suit your system and installation needs. Then type qmake graspit.pro.

Build and go. From $GRASPIT/ type make.

2.2 GraspIt! Installation - Windows

We assume you are using the Microsoft Visual Studio compiler. The test we have done is on a Windows7 32-bit computer.

Qt

Download Qt for C++ from the the Qt website.

GraspIt! is currently tested using Qt 4.7.4. On the Qt website, choose "Qt Library" section, then "Qt libraries 4.7.4 for Windows (VS 2008, 228 MB)" and wait until it begins to download automatically. If not, you can click the link on the page to begin download. Currently, the recommended download link that you will arrive at is
http://get.qt.nokia.com/qt/source/qt-win-opensource-4.7.4-vs2008.exe.
However, this will change as new versions are added to the website. Unzip the archive to a directory of your choice.

Set the following environment variables:

WARNING: Other programs use Qt binaries, and often include the Qt dll's (such as QtGui4.dll) in their distribution. If a path to some other version of a Qt dll exists in you PATH environment variable before $QTDIR/bin, the system will link GraspIt against the wrong version, often causing failure to run. To be sure that you are linking against the right dll's, put $QTDIR/bin at the beginning of your PATH.

Coin3D

Download Coin3d for your C++ compiler from the Coin3D website.

We have tested the installation of GraspIt! using Coin 3.1.3.

Goto build/msvc9/coin3.sln and compile the project.

Set the following environment variables:

SoQt

Download SoQt from the Coin3D website.

We tested SoQt 1.5.0.

You will need to build SoQt yourself from source code. The source code comes with MS Visual Studio solution files, choose the appropriate one depending on your compiler. Again, we recommend building both debug and release versions. After the build completes, take a look in $COINDIR/bin to make sure that the appropriate SoQt dlls (soqt1.dll and/or soqt1d.dll) have been built.

Lapack

You will need to link GraspIt! against your favorite implementation of Lapack (cLapack or MKL). This usually involves two steps: using a "wrapper" file so you can call Fortran functions from C code and linking against the correct library.

We have tested GraspIt! with cLapack from:http://www.netlib.org/clapack/.

To install it:

Unfortunately, it is possible that you might have to change these settings to get the installation to work on your system, or you might be using a different version of Lapack altogether. Due to the large number of possible configurations, we can not provide more in-depth guidelines. If linking against Lapack fails, please see the Windows-specific GraspIt! project file (graspit-lib-WINDOWS.pro), find the blas/lapack block, and try to adapt it to your settings.

You can also try using Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL), available from
http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-mkl/ (free trial available). To switch between MKL and cLapack, just go to graspit.pro and change the flag.

Dlfcn

Using Graspit! in Windows , we need to get a copy of dlfcn for plugin. One version is from Google code. You can download it from here: http://code.google.com/p/dlfcn-win32.

Please download the source and unzip it locally. Set the following environment variable:

GraspIt!

Download and unzip the GraspIt! code itself. Set the following environment variable:

Build QHull. Open and build the MS Visual Studio solution $GRASPIT/qhull/windows/qhull.sln. Once again, we recommend building both debug and release versions. Make sure qhull.lib has been installed in the appropriate directory ($GRASPIT/qhull/windows/Debug and/or $GRASPIT/qhull/windows/Release).

Edit $GRASPIT/graspit.pro to suit your particular installation. Among other options, you can choose which version of Lapack to use. Then, create the GraspIt! MS Visual Studio project file from the Qt project file. Execute the following command from inside $GRASPIT in a command prompt:

qmake -t vcapp -o graspit.vcproj graspit.pro

This will create your GraspIt! MS Visual Studio project file. Open graspit.vcproj in MS Visual Studio. Build GraspIt! and run.

IMPORTANT: based on the choice of Debug vs. Release made in the graspit.pro file, make sure the appropriate configuration (Debug or Release) is also selected in MS Visual Studio. This ensures linking against the correct Qt libraries.

WARNING: it is not enough to switch between Debug and Release builds using only the option in in MS Visual Studio. This will link against the appropriate Qt libraries but NOT against the appropriate Coin, SoQt and QHull libraries! The correct way of choosing a Debug or Release build is to also edit the graspit.pro file.

2.3 GraspIt! Installation - Ubuntu Linux with ROS

GraspIt! is also available through a ROS stack, allowing you to either the GraspIt! binaries or compile the source code through the ROS installation mechanism. The ROS stack also provides examples of how to use ROS and GraspIt! together. For more details, please see the relevant stack documentation on the ROS wiki:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/graspit_simulator


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3 Getting StartedTop1 Introduction2 InstallationContents