In the long run I firmly believe that you would be well ahead of the game by considering changing to a different method. From some personal experience I started using viewPanels etc. After considerable time and effort I just found them to be way to difficult to get them to perform well and do what I wanted. I now use almost nothing but repeat controls. A bit of a learning curve but the result is well worth the effort.
Depending on the need I build a categorized view in Notes then get the columnValues from the first column and set a viewScope variable (sat vsCat1) to those values. My top level Repeat is simply bound to viewScope.vsCat1. I add an Expand Collapse button to the repeat. then the second level repeat is wrapped in a panel where I define the datasource as a domino view and filter the return based on the category selected in the Expand.
I have now extended this and built three custome controls ccCat1Template ccCat2Template and ccCat3Template now to create a new 'view' insert the appropriate customControl set a few custom properties and in less that 5 minutes I have it working. Yes it took me a few hours to get the structure of the templates (could add a 4 level but figure that if I need to go that deep maybe I need to rethink what I"m doing).
I understand that there is no such thing as one size fits all, but I have found that the repeat meets almost all my needs, but as they say "your experience might very".