Methods and System for Incremental Exploration of Design Changes in Large Computer-Aided Design Models

Example embodiments provide methods, mediums, and systems for making and evaluating changes to a model. According to example embodiments, checkpoints may be created as a user changes components in the model. The checkpoints may store changed components in the model that have been changed since a previous checkpoint, and a reference (e.g., a pointer) to the previous checkpoint. A user may freely create new checkpoints, revert to previous checkpoints, and select a checkpointed version of the model to be used as an official working version of the model. Upon activating an existing checkpoint, parametric relationships in the model assembly may be automatically updated in order to make components in the model consistent with each other. Thus, the user can readily change the model and evaluate variations of a design, while at the same time saving storage space by avoiding the need to repeatedly save different versions of the model.