Patent ID: 8010335

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for creating and using a definition of a bus signal in a graphical modeling environment, comprising: defining a definition for a non-virtual bus signal upon which a non-virtual operation may be performed in a graphical modeling environment executing on a computing device, the non-virtual operation performed without first de-grouping a plurality of data signals included in the bus signal, the definition including: a specification for each data signal in the plurality of data signals, the plurality of data signals including at least a first signal of a first data type and a second signal of a second data type, where the first data type differs from the second data type, each specification specifying: at least one characteristic for each data signal in the plurality of data signals, the at least one characteristic not an identifier for the data signal; including the bus signal in a graphical model; generating computer-executable instructions implementing the definition for the bus signal as an implementation variant based on a model context, the implementation variant being one of a plurality of available variants of the definition; and using the computer-executable instructions for implementing the bus signal during an execution of the graphical model.