In Views Studio, an inspector is an instance of the class IlvStInspector. Views Studio contains one instance of this class, which is used to inspect selected graphic objects in the active buffer. The role of an inspector is to display the inspector panel that corresponds to the last selected graphic object.

To display the appropriate inspector panel, the inspector maintains a table that maps graphic object classes to inspector panel classes. If a graphic object class has no associated inspector panel, the inspector attaches it to the inspector panel of the first superclass in the inheritance path that has an associated inspector panel. Let us suppose that the object to be inspected is of the type IlvMyTextField, a class derived from IlvTextField. If no inspector panel has been defined for this class, the Views Studio inspector displays the IlvTextField inspector panel.

An inspector panel is made up of several components, which are described in the following sections.