Patent ID: 7003751

Claim:
A method for creating a circuit design, comprising: instantiating a plurality of objects in response to execution of an object-oriented program, the objects having hierarchy attributes, connectivity attributes, and display attributes that describe a plurality of modules, wherein the hierarchy attributes define parent-child relationships between modules, the connectivity attributes define input-output connections between modules, and the display attributes define a layout of the modules for viewing, wherein each of the objects has an associated method for generating a first design specification in a first format, and the plurality of objects include frame-type objects, each frame-type object having attributes that specify a display location of the associated frame, and each child module has at least one frame-type object that specifies a display location of the child module within a frame-type object associated with a parent module of the child module; generating the first design specification from the plurality of objects; and displaying the modules and logic elements in accordance with the display attributes.