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drawtonomy vs odrviewer.io

odrviewer.io is an online OpenDRIVE viewer. You load an .xodr file and it renders the road network in 3D in the browser, and can export an .obj model from it. It is built on the open-source libOpenDRIVE C++ library compiled to WebGL; the viewer core itself is closed-source, with public assets on GitHub.

What odrviewer.io covers (per the site and libOpenDRIVE):

  • Loading and viewing OpenDRIVE .xodr files in 3D, entirely in the browser.
  • Exporting an .obj mesh of the road geometry.
  • A quick, install-free way to sanity-check what an .xodr file actually contains.

For checking an OpenDRIVE file someone handed you — or that your own tool produced — odrviewer.io is a convenient browser-based way to look at it.

odrviewer.io and drawtonomy are not really substitutes: odrviewer.io is primarily for viewing .xodr files, while drawtonomy is for sketching a 2D layout and exporting OpenDRIVE. Per its exporter documentation, drawtonomy’s OpenDRIVE 1.8 export covers a subset of the spec — lanes, traffic lights, crosswalks, basic objects — and does not yet emit junction primitives or traffic signs as <signal> entries.

A natural pairing — both run in the browser with nothing to install:

  • Sketch a simple layout in drawtonomy and export OpenDRIVE 1.8.
  • Open the exported .xodr in odrviewer.io to see the 3D rendering and confirm the geometry reads as expected.
  • Iterate in drawtonomy; re-check in odrviewer.io.

drawtonomy is the sketch-and-export side; odrviewer.io is the view-and-inspect side.

Both tools show that OpenDRIVE workflows can live in the browser without a desktop install. odrviewer.io’s foundation, libOpenDRIVE, is also used elsewhere in the ASAM OpenDRIVE tooling community. For tools that create OpenDRIVE rather than view it, see LaneMaker, Truevision Designer, and RoadRunner. We work on different parts of the same ecosystem.