Patent ID: 7171344

Claim:
A method for simulating operation of a machine component, comprising: establishing and storing a first original engineering model of a machine component and additional original engineering models for a set of sub-components of the machine component, wherein each of the sub-components is compatible for use with the machine component; lightening the first original engineering model to establish a first lightened engineering model and lightening each of the additional original engineering models to establish additional lightened engineering models, the lightened engineering models including less data than their respective original engineering models; storing the lightened engineering models at a server system; displaying, in a web browser at a client system, a web page including a selection area for selecting the machine component; receiving, at the server system, selection data from a user, the selection data selecting the machine component from the web page; in response to the selection data: displaying the first lightened engineering model in the browser at the client system, thereby establishing a web-based model of the machine component based on the selection data and the first lightened engineering model; and presenting a list of the set of additional lightened engineering models in the web browser at the client system as selectable sub-components; receiving a selection, from the plurality of additional lightened engineering models in the web browser, of one or more of the sub-components to add to the web-based model; adding one or more of the sub-components to the displayed web-based model to create an updated web-based model, and displaying the updated web-based model in the web browser; providing, to the user, one or more options reflecting different simulation environments for simulating operation of the web-based model of the configured component; receiving a selection from the user reflecting a selected simulation environment; and simulating operation of the updated web-based model in the selected simulation environment.