Layers
The Layers panel lists everything drawn on your map, from the top layer down to the basemap. It is also the panel that decides what the rest of the workspace works on: the layer you select here drives Style, Popup, Edit and the attribute table.
The panel header
Section titled “The panel header”Four buttons sit next to the title.
- Add Data opens the Data panel, the same one as the rail entry.
- New group creates an empty folder in the stack.
- Show all / Hide all toggles the visibility of every layer at once.
- Close collapses the panel back to the rail.
Under the layers, a search box finds a place by name and flies the map to it. It is a navigation aid for you as a builder. If you want your audience to search, add the Place search widget instead.
Order, visibility and opacity
Section titled “Order, visibility and opacity”- Order: drag a layer to move it, or use its up and down buttons. A layer higher in the list draws on top. The basemap always stays at the bottom.
- Visibility: the eye button shows or hides a layer.
- Opacity: each layer has a slider from 0 to 100 percent. Double click the value to type an exact number.
Groups
Section titled “Groups”A group is a folder in the stack. Create one from the header button, or from a layer’s menu with New group from layer.
A group has its own visibility toggle, its own opacity slider and its own menu: rename, move up or down, ungroup and keep the layers, or delete the group and its layers. Hiding a group hides everything inside it, and the layers it contains say so.
Move a layer into a group, or out of it, from that layer’s menu.
Per layer buttons
Section titled “Per layer buttons”Every layer row carries the actions you reach for constantly.
- Zoom to layer fits the map to its extent.
- Identify turns on click to inspect. On a vector layer it reports the clicked feature’s attributes, on a raster it reads the pixel value.
- Popup on / off is a shortcut for vector layers: it turns the layer’s configured popup on or off without opening the Popup panel.
The layer menu
Section titled “The layer menu”The rest of the actions live in the layer’s menu.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rename | Renames the layer. Double clicking the name does the same. |
| New group from layer / Move to group / Remove from group | Organize the stack. |
| Edit geometry | Opens the Edit panel on this layer. |
| Open attribute table | Docks the attribute table under the map. |
| Materialize to editable layer | Turns a query backed layer into a plain vector layer you can edit and style freely. |
| Bind to time slider | Picks a date field so the Time slider widget can filter this layer. |
| Export | Downloads the layer as GeoJSON, GeoParquet, GeoPackage, zipped Shapefile or CSV. Rasters export as GeoTIFF. |
| Item details | For a layer opened from your Datastore, shows the asset it came from. |
| Style | Opens the Style panel on this layer. |
| Remove | Takes the layer off the map. Your Datastore asset is untouched. |
Entries that do not apply to a layer are simply absent. A raster has no attribute table, a live web service has nothing to materialize.
Refreshing live layers
Section titled “Refreshing live layers”Layers backed by a live source, WFS and GeoJSON from a URL, can re fetch themselves on a schedule. Open the layer’s refresh settings and choose an interval: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or a custom number of seconds. You can also refresh once, by hand.
The row reports what happened on each pass, so a source that started failing is visible rather than silent.
The basemap
Section titled “The basemap”The Background entry at the bottom of the panel is your basemap. Toggle its visibility and set its opacity there. Double click it to open the basemap picker and switch style. Basemaps come in through Data, like everything else.
The Background row cannot be reordered and cannot be renamed: it is the floor of the stack, not a layer among others.