Patent ID: 7496861

Claim:
A method for generalizing design attributes in a design capture environment comprising the steps of: (A) providing a data structure stored in a computer readable medium, said data structure containing information defining one or more auxiliary configurators, said one or more auxiliary configurators adding one or more auxiliary parameters to a design assembly tool or suite of design assembly tools, said one or more auxiliary configurators being in addition to one or more core-referenced configurators and one or more built-in configurators of said design assembly tool or suite of design assembly tools, wherein said one or more auxiliary configurators are (a) neither referenced by a core nor built into said design assembly tool or suite of design assembly tools and (b) independent of or unknown to (i) the core, (ii) a designer of the core (iii) the design assembly tool or suite of design assembly tools and (iv) a designer of the design assembly tool or suite of design assembly tools; and (B) linking said one or more auxiliary configurators to predetermined object points in an abstracted design based upon a field within each auxiliary configurator configured to identify one or more design elements to which each auxiliary configurator applies, wherein said design assembly tool or suite of design assembly tools is configured to read said one or more auxiliary configurators from said computer readable medium.