Patent ID: 8612026

Claim:
A computer implemented method for planning an industrial automation arrangement, comprising: generating, by a processor of the computer, an object model from data objects, which represent automation components, and from relationships between these objects; acquiring a sequence of control actions by a user and using the acquired sequence of control actions to select, by the processor, the objects from an object library and to relate the selected objects to one another; storing, in a memory, a plurality of sequences of control actions and associated respective effects on the object model as respective entity control trees with control steps; selecting, by the processor, at least two of the entity control trees and generating a generalized type of control tree using a first comparison based on the at least two of the entity control trees; and automatically planning the industrial automation arrangement based on the generalized type of control tree; wherein, in a case of a particular control step of those control steps of the generalized type of control tree in which at least one of corresponding control steps and respective effects of the control steps on a respective object model of the entity control trees used for the first comparison do not match one another, a user query is effected to specify the particular control step of the generalized type of control tree.