Robot arm simulation (techniques,advices)

[Shaoboy]

Hi community of cplusplus!

I'm looking for some advices to getting started with a graphic programming related subject.

This is my last semester in my electrical engineering studies. We got a project to make a 5-axis robot arm. My part was to build its software side, controlling the motors,receiving position information of the servos and images from the attached camera.

Now we need to upgrade it and i decided to make a simulation part for the software.

At first i want to make something similar to this(without the text of course):

http://www.societyofrobots.com/images/robot_arm_FBD.png

- want to display its joints(axis-points) and arms
- providing enough information (x,y coords) and using forward/inverse kinematics i want it to find a certain point on the canvas (considering some restriction like angles)
- my final goal is to implement this whole thing in 3d with a 3d model

My first thought was to use OpenGL, but i'm not sure if it's the best consedering the fact that i have only 3 months until the deadline and never done anything like this.

So should i stick to OpenGl or find an engine?

And also don't know that what technique could do this trick, i read little about bone animation but it's really not my field.

I would be grateful for any advices,experiences,resources you can share with me to start this journey.

Thank you in advance.