The Property Inspector parses type information from COM-enabled objects, including AutoCAD entities. The Property Inspector supports two types of properties: static and dynamic. Figure 4 shows the Property Inspector property model.
Static properties are defined at compile time and are available for all AutoCAD entities. The Inspector Engine queries static properties through the IDispatch, ITypeInfo, and ITypeLib interfaces.
Dynamic properties are optional data that can be generated, added, removed, and configured at runtime. These properties usually are associated with the AcRxClass object that represents an object's class in the ObjectARX runtime tree. Dynamic properties can apply to all instances of the related entity class, or to only certain instances. The Inspector Engine finds dynamic properties by querying special dynamic property manager and property source objects.
The Property Inspector is able to display properties not only of graphical and non-graphical ActiveX objects, but also of AutoCAD commands. Like other objects, command objects may expose both static and dynamic properties. Applications can also use the Property Inspector to display properties that are not related to an object, command, or an AcRx class.