We describe a preliminary implementation of the high-level modelling language Zinc. This language supports a modelling methodology in which the same Zinc model can be automatically mapped into different design models, thus allowing modellers to easily “plug and play” with different solving techniques and so choose the most appropriate for that problem. Currently, mappings to three very different design models based on constraint programming (CP), mixed integer programming (MIP) and local search are provided. Zinc is the first modelling language that we know of that supports such solver and technique-independent modelling. It does this by using an intermediate language called Flattened Zinc, and rewrite rules for transforming the Flattened Zinc model into one that is tailored to a particular solving technique.