Each glyph representing a case is its own data structure, or object, called a point-symbol; similarly there is an axis object, and a label object. Even though a scatterplot is composed of point symbols, axes and a few labels, it is convenient to introduce an intermediate object called a 2d-pointcloud object consisting of the point symbols. In general then, a statistical plot is a hierarchy of objects; the scatterplot object consists of axes, label and a point cloud which itself consists of point symbols, while a scatterplot matrix consists of many point clouds and labels.
The plot and each of its components are termed a view. A simple view is a view such as a point symbol or label which contains no other views. All other views are referred to as compound views. In our software organisation, information pertaining to a particular view is localised in that view. All views have the slots summarised in the following table:
| Slot | Purpose | Example |
| Viewed object | The data structure being `viewed' | scatterplot: dataset |
| point symbol: case | ||
| function-view: single variable function | ||
| Drawing style | Controls appearance | colour, highlighting |
| Viewports | Screen locations where view appears | |
| Menus | User interface to view | Change colour, variate |
| Access viewed object |