Patent ID: 7162479

Claim:
A method in a computer system for storing element chunks of elements in a file format, the elements being variable sized data records arranged in a format that can be interpreted by a computer program comprising: storing at least one root storage in a storage area; storing at least one model in said root storage, the model including a model header stream, the model header stream including at least one of a model name, units, or a geometric range for the model; storing a graphic element list and a control element list in said at least one model, said graphic element list including element chunks containing graphic elements having a physical representation and said control element list having element chunks containing control elements having no physical representation; assigning a preselected number of elements to each element chunk; and allocating each element to an element chunk in one of said control element list and said graphic element list, the element chunks being variable sized and having a uniqiue name and a fixed header including at least one of a number of elements in the element chunk, a compression scheme, or an encryption scheme for the elements.