Hydraulic manipulators have been widely used in many different fields due to their high force/torque to inertia ratio. The increased speed of hydraulic manipulators requires solutions to problems ranging from mechanical design to the need to determine a robot model suitable for model-based control. As a solution, this paper presents the integration of SolidWorks with Simscape for designing and controlling hydraulic manipulators. The integration provides a platform for the rapid control prototyping of a hydraulic robot without the need to build actual prototypes. The mechanical drawings of a manipulator are first created using Solidworks and are then imported into Simscape, where the manipulator is represented by connected block diagrams based on the principle of physical modeling. Simulation examples for a 3D manipulator made by KNR SYSTEM INC are verified to show the effectiveness of the presented platform.