Patent ID: 7761273

Claim:
In an electronic device, a method comprising: storing a definition for modeling a bus signal in a graphical modeling environment, the definition independent of a specific model in the graphical modeling environment, the bus signal including a plurality of data signals and provided directly as input to a non-virtual operation block, the definition including: a specification for each data signal in the plurality of data signals, each specification specifying: at least one identification characteristic for each data signal in the plurality of data signals, the identification characteristic used to identify each data signal, and at least one non-identification characteristic for each data signal in the plurality of data signals, where the non-identification characteristic is a characteristic that differs from the identification characteristic; associating the definition for the bus signal with a model so that the stored definition is available for use in the model when the model is executed in the graphical modeling environment; and providing a bus signal based on the definition directly as input to a non-virtual operation block during execution of the model in the graphical modeling environment.