Patent ID: 8577487

Claim:
A system for facilitating configuration of an instrument panel, the system comprising: a memory component configured to store information about vehicles and information about an instrument panel of each vehicle; and a first computing device, communicatively connected with the memory component, the first computing device configured to: activate an instrument panel configuration service; obtain information about configurable attributes of an instrument panel for a vehicle; receive first user input via the instrument panel configuration service regarding a desired configuration of the instrument panel that includes at least one hardware instrument and at least one virtual instrument, wherein the first user input is received from a remote computing device and is directed to at least one of the configurable attributes, and wherein the at least one configurable attribute comprises a visual attribute of the at least one virtual instrument; store information representing the desired configuration of the instrument panel; stop the instrument panel configuration service responsive to second user input; resume the instrument panel configuration service responsive to third user input; obtain the stored information representing the desired configuration of the instrument panel; receive fourth user input via the instrument panel configuration service regarding a modification to the desired configuration of the instrument panel; generate a visual representation of the instrument panel based on the received first and fourth user input, wherein the visual representation of the instrument panel includes depictions of the hardware and virtual instruments; and generate a build specification that is designed to be used by a manufacturer for assembling an instrument panel that corresponds to the generated visual representation.