Abstract Manufacturers of machines and plants are faced with the challenge to quickly find, compare and evaluate solutions for their customers during the tendering phase. Besides acquisition costs, figures about life cycle costs and energy efficiency are claimed by sustainability-aware customers when making a choice between different possible solution variants. In this paper an approach for automatic variant compilation and simulation model generation, based on mechatronic modules, is introduced. The results, validated using an example application of a modular transfer system, show that using the proposed method can significantly speed up the process of finding the appropriate module configuration based on reliable simulation models even for non-simulation-experts.