Method and apparatus for manipulating and displaying graphical objects in a computer display device

A method of manipulating and displaying a graphical object on a computer display device of a computer system which includes the computer display device, a processor, and memory, the method comprising the steps of:

• creating a graphical object in an object-oriented environment and storing the graphical object in the memory of the computer system, the graphical object comprising a plurality of child graphical objects, the graphical object and each of the child graphical objects having a property corresponding to the orientation of a representation of the respective graphical object, at least two of said graphical objects being operatively connected to one another through an anchor point with one of said graphical objects having an anchor property corresponding to rotation of the respective graphical object representation about the anchor point, the anchor property having locked and unlocked settings, the property of each of the respective graphical objects having an initial value;
• scanning the graphical object by traversing through each of the child graphical objects to form a connection tree having the initial values of each property of the respective graphical objects;
• altering the value of the property of the graphical object from the initial value corresponding to a change in the position of the representation of the graphical object;
• and
• graphically displaying the representation of the graphical object on the display device by traversing through the connection tree to broadcast the altered value of the graphical object to each of the child graphical objects, recalculating the value of each property of the child graphical objects based on its initial value and the altered value of the graphical object, the value of the anchor properly remaining unchanged when in the locked setting and altered when in the unlocked setting where a change of position occurs to at least one of the representations of the graphical objects which are operatively connected to one another through the anchor point, and displaying the representation of the graphical object including its child graphical objects on the display device with said recalculated values.