Windchill UI deals with objects either in Persistable form or in TypeInstance form and hence IconDelegates should be able to handle both the forms. The attributes that participate in determining the icon is easily available if you have the object in Persistable form. If the object is in a TypeInstance form and the attributes are not available, then the TypeInstance has to be inflated to get the attributes, which can degrade the performance. If its in a TypeInstance object, the icon and tool tip for the icon are available as an SCA attribute, which is defined in <Windchill>/codebase/LogicalAttributes.xml