The depth tool performs a depth-first traversal of a specified portion of the given transmittal. If a specific start object is specified, depth traverses the component tree rooted at that object; otherwise, depth begins with the <Transmittal Root> instance serving as the root object of the given transmittal.

The level of verbosity of output is controlled by the user. At lower levels, only the object ID (if the API implementation supports the mechanism) and class of each object encountered are supplied, while at higher verbosity levels, the field values are retrieved and printed as well. The maximum level of verbose output is that at which the cells of <Data Table> instances and <Mesh Face Table> instances and the texels of <Image> instances are retrieved and printed as well.