Patent ID: 7280990

Claim:
A method for designing and modeling a product in a knowledge based engineering environment, comprising: creating a geometry of an internally created object associated with an internal programming language; receiving an externally created object having a geometry created by an external programming language not associated with the internal programming language; capturing engineering rules related to the internally created object; identifying attributes related to the externally created object for processing by the internal programming language; associating the geometry of the internally created object to the engineering rules in the internal programming language such that changes made in the geometry of the internally created object are automatically reflected in the engineering rules and changes to the engineering rules are automatically reflected in the geometry of the internally created object; associating the geometry of the externally created object to the attributes such that changes made in the geometry of the externally created object are automatically reflected in the attributes and changes to the attributes are automatically reflected in the geometry of the externally created object; graphically displaying the geometry of the internally and externally created objects according to the changes made thereto or through the respective engineering rules or attributes.