Patent ID: 7802221

Claim:
A method for providing a digital circuit design, comprising: receiving a plurality of components including a plurality of master components and a slave component for the digital circuit design, wherein the slave component is configured to respond to the master components, wherein the master components include a first master component and a second master component; generating a connection panel including a plurality of lines between the plurality of components, the plurality of lines including open connectible nodes and closed connectible nodes, wherein the open connectible nodes correspond to open connections between the components and the closed connectible nodes correspond to closed connections between the components; allocating a first column to the first master component; allocating a second column to the second master component; displaying, via a processor, the connection panel, wherein different modes associated with the connection panel can be selected to adjust the amount of displayed interconnection information related to the open connectible nodes and the closed connectible nodes, wherein the different modes include a view collapsed mode, wherein said displaying the connection panel includes sharing, in the view collapsed mode, the first or second column by the respective first or second master component by merging the allocations of the first and second columns; displaying, via the processor, the first and second master components only on one side of the connection panel.