Patent ID: 7860691

Claim:
A tangible memory for access by an application program being executed on a computer and a data structure stored in said tangible memory, the data structure defining a master block definition associated with instantiations of a block to be included in a computer-aided design and included in a electronic file used by the application program to display the computer-aided design including the instantiation of the block, where a computer-aided design is a two or three dimensional drawing prepared using a computer-aided design software application, the data structure comprising: a block table record in a database; and an extension dictionary associated with the block table record and including a dependency graph; where: the block table record includes a master block definition defining a geometry of a block where one or more block instantiations of the block are to be included in the computer-aided design and defining an action of the block, where an action is an allowable manipulation of at least one graphical entity included in the block and each block instantiation can be manipulated differently, the block including one or more graphical entities and the at least one allowable manipulation, and the dependency graph includes relationship information about the one or more graphical entities and the at least one allowable manipulation and when the dependency graph is evaluated with per instance values of a particular block instantiation an anonymous block definition is generated comprising a new geometry for the particular block instantiation in accordance with the allowable manipulation of the block as defined in the master block definition.