Sure you can. I did exactly this with lots of worlds by just creating a catkin package called quad_world with a launch file in it that spawns the quadcopter and all kinds of other stuff (I used quadrotor_empty_world.launch as base).
As follows:
start.launch contains:
<arg name="world_name" default="$(find quad_world)/worlds/tonystart124.world" />
<include file="$(find quad_world)/launch/world.launch">
<arg name="world_name" default="$(arg world_name)"/>
</include>
<include file="$(find hector_quadrotor_gazebo)/launch/spawn_quadrotor.launch" />
world.launch is the following:
<launch>
<!-- these are the arguments you can pass this launch file, for example paused:=true -->
<arg name="paused" default="false"/>
<arg name="use_sim_time" default="true"/>
<arg name="headless" default="false"/>
<arg name="debug" default="false"/>
<arg name="verbose" default="false" />
<arg name="world_name" />
<!-- set use_sim_time flag -->
<group if="$(arg use_sim_time)">
<param name="/use_sim_time" value="true" />
</group>
<!-- set command arguments -->
<arg unless="$(arg paused)" name="command_arg1" value=""/>
<arg if="$(arg paused)" name="command_arg1" value="-u"/>
<arg unless="$(arg headless)" name="command_arg2" value=""/>
<arg if="$(arg headless)" name="command_arg2" value="-r"/>
<arg unless="$(arg verbose)" name="command_arg3" value=""/>
<arg if="$(arg verbose)" name="command_arg3" value="--verbose"/>
<arg unless="$(arg debug)" name="script_type" value="gzserver"/>
<arg if="$(arg debug)" name="script_type" value="debug"/>
<!-- start gazebo server-->
<node name="gazebo" pkg="gazebo_ros" type="$(arg script_type)" respawn="false" output="screen"
args="$(arg command_arg1) $(arg command_arg2) $(arg command_arg3) $(arg world_name)" />
<!-- start gazebo client -->
<node name="gazebo_gui" pkg="gazebo_ros" type="gzclient" respawn="false" output="screen"/>
</launch>
Good luck with your project!
