Patent ID: 7712038

Claim:
A device for finding information elements in one or more objects, the information elements being storable in a storage device, the objects being displayable on a display device via a graphical user interface, the information elements being parts or assemblies of at least one machine or at least one device and the objects being a machine or device, comprising: a display device having a graphical user interface for graphically displaying an object, the information elements being arranged in a coordinate system of the graphically displayed object so that each information element has associated therewith at least one coordinate point in the graphically displayed object; the graphical user interface including, for finding the desired information element, at least one selection window variable in size or shape allowing selection of an arbitrarily-sized subset of coordinate points and associated information elements of the object so as to define selected information elements by dragging the selection window across the object displayed in the graphical user interface; and the selected information elements being displayable on the graphical user interface of the display device; wherein the coordinate points are points of a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system; the graphical user interface including at least one second selection window, perpendicular support vectors of planes defined by the first selection window and the second selection window being linearly independent.