And for showing new data the viewmodel helps you too. You just have to bind the viewmodel once to the fields and only need to replace the backing pojo/object to display new data. Without the viewmodel you would have to rebind all the fields on every pojo/object change, but I think this aspect is quite well explained in the docs: https://edvin.gitbooks.io/tornadofx-guide/content/part1/11.%20Editing%20Models%20and%20Validation.html