My layers, files and exports

#My layers

My layers, at the top of Layers, holds layers of your own: real layers with fields, a table, editing and history, that belong to you rather than to the workspace. Each one belongs to the app it was made, imported or copied in, and is listed there; you can show it in your other apps too (see Where it shows below). Nobody else sees them until you share them. The workspace's owners, administrators and editors make them, and in a client's apps that client's owners, administrators and editors; viewers see the ones shared with them.

A private layer is seen only by its author and the people they share it with — nobody else, whatever their role: not the workspace's owners or administrators, and not Cartema support. When its author offers it to the workspace's data, the owners and administrators who decide on the offer may look at it until they have. They see how much room each person's private layers take (Studio → People, in the person's panel), never what they hold.

#Making and filling one

• + makes a new layer: a Name, the kind of shapes (Points, Lines or Areas) and its fields, each with a type and, if you like, required, a default, a length or a list of allowed values. Under Who may open it you can share it from the start, with the same choices as Share (see Sharing below); left as it is, it is Only me.
• Upload (the arrow beside +) imports a file into your layers: a shapefile (zipped with its companions), GeoPackage, geodatabase, GeoJSON, KML/KMZ, CSV, DXF or DWG. Every layer in the file becomes one of yours; a drawing comes in as its lines, areas and text, drawn as in CAD; a closed polyline comes in as an area as well as a line, so it can be filled and measured. Choose the Coordinate system when the file has none (CAD and CSV usually do not), and under Who may open it share its layers from the start, as for a new layer; left as it is, it is Only me. The import runs in the background: you can close the window, and the layers appear when they are ready. A file that becomes several layers is listed as one group named after the file, with its parts (Lines, Areas, Text, Points, or the file's own layers) under it: the group's box switches them all, and its … menu zooms to, moves, renames, shares, removes from this app or deletes all of them together and has one Opacity slider for all of them, while each part keeps its own switch, style and table.
• Copy to my layers, in any layer's … menu, copies what that layer shows here — every feature and attribute, drawn the same way. The app's data is not touched.
• Make it a layer, beside a saved drawing in Draw, turns the drawing into layers: one for its points, its text, its lines and its areas, with each shape's label, colour and width as fields.

Then draw and change features with Edit, as on any editable layer (see Layers and editing). In the layer's … menu: Move to…, Rename, Style (colours, shapes and icons, categories by a field, labels), Share, Submit to the workspace…, Remove from this app and Delete.

#Where it shows

My layers is a folder. It opens and closes like the app's folders, shows how many layers it holds, and starts closed when it holds more than five; the app remembers how you left it. Your own layers come first, and the layers others shared with you are a group of their own inside it, Shared with me.

Which apps list it. A layer belongs to the app it was made in — with +, imported with Upload, copied with Copy to my layers or made from a drawing — and My layers lists it in that app only. Layers made before layers belonged to an app are listed in every app until you remove them from the ones they do not belong to.

• Remove from this app, in the layer's … menu, takes it off this app's list and map — for you only. The layer, its features and the other apps are not touched, and nobody else's view changes.
• Not in this app, at the foot of My layers, lists your layers (and those shared with you) that this app does not show: the ones you removed here and the ones that belong to another app. Show here brings one into this app.
• Keep only in this app, in the menu of a layer of yours that belongs to no app or to another one, makes it this app's layer: your other apps stop listing it, and so do the apps of the people you shared it with (they can still Show here).
• Delete removes the layer itself, with all its features, from every app and for everyone it is shared with. It cannot be undone; to take a layer off one app only, use Remove from this app.

Where in the list. A layer of yours shows under My layers until you put it somewhere else: Move to… in its … menu lists your own folders and the app's folders; in one of the app's folders, the layer goes to the top of the one you choose — marked yours — and is drawn on the map at that place among the app's layers. My layers takes it back. When importing a file, Place in does the same for every layer the file becomes. Where you put a layer is yours alone and for this app only: the app does not change for anybody else, and putting a layer of another app in one of this app's folders also shows it here.

Your folders in My layers. Your own layers can be filed in folders of your own, inside My layers, as deep as you need. Your folders are yours alone: nobody else sees them, a person you share a layer with sees it at the top of their own My layers, and they appear in every app where your layers do.

• The folder button beside Upload makes a folder at the top of My layers; a folder's … menu makes one inside it, renames it, moves it (Move up, Move down, Into the folder above, Out of the folder) and deletes it.
• Drag a layer, an uploaded file's group or a folder onto a folder to put it inside; a line shows where it lands. Dropping it on the My layers title takes it out of every folder. Folders keep the order you give them; in a folder, its folders come first, then its layers.
• From the keyboard, Move to… in a layer's … menu lists your folders as well as the app's.
• Delete folder removes the folder only: what it held moves up one level. No layer is ever deleted with a folder.

Studio → Datasets → Private layers lists your own and the ones shared with you, whichever app they belong to, and the layers offered to the workspace.

#Sharing

Share works as it does for drawings: add people by name as Viewer or Editor, open the layer to everyone in the layer's app — the people who can open the app it belongs to — or to anyone with the link among the people who share an app with you, as viewers or editors. A layer that belongs to no app is opened to everyone who shares an app with you. You can only share with people who can open one of your apps; nobody outside them sees the layer, or your name. The same choices are offered when you make a new layer or import a file, under Who may open it; a file that becomes several layers opens all of them to the same people. An editor can change its features, rename it and style it; only you decide who may open it, and only you delete it. A person switches a shared layer on or off on their own map.

#Handing a layer to the workspace

Submit to the workspace… offers your layer to the workspace's data:

• As a new layer — it becomes a layer of the workspace: listed under Datasets, placed in any app, no longer yours to share or delete;
• Add to an existing layer — its features are added to one the workspace has, of the same kind of shapes.

Write a note for whoever decides. Nothing changes until an owner or administrator accepts it in Studio → Datasets → Private layers; meanwhile the layer shows waiting for approval, and Withdraw the request takes it back. If it is turned down, the reason shows under the layer.

The person who accepts an addition checks which of your fields fills each field of theirs (matched by name and label to start with), and chooses whether your layer is kept or deleted afterwards. Every feature added carries a line in its history saying which private layer it came from. A layer that began as an editable copy of the same layer updates the features it was copied from instead of adding them again; only the features drawn new in it are added.

#Files on features

Any feature can carry files: photos, PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, text and CSV, zip, DWG and DXF, KML and KMZ, and videos — up to 50 MB each.

• Identify a feature to see its files: pictures as small images, the rest by name. Pictures and PDFs open in the browser; other files download.
• In Edit, with a feature open, Attach adds files (several at once) and × takes one off.
• In the attribute table, a paperclip next to the number shows how many files a feature has.

Whoever can see a layer can open its files; whoever can edit it can add and remove them. A feature's files go with it when features are merged, and when a private layer's features are added to the workspace.

#Exporting a layer

Export…, in a layer's … menu, saves what the layer shows as a file: GeoPackage, Shapefile (zip), GeoJSON, KML, CSV or DXF, in longitude and latitude or one of the app's grids (KML is always longitude and latitude; a DXF is best in metres). Under Rows, All rows exports every feature the layer shows here, and Selected rows only the features selected on the map or in the attribute table. The same is in the attribute table's toolbar, as Export, beside Save as layer (see Finding and reading data). The file is prepared in the background and offered as Download; only you can download it, and it is kept for a week.

The workspace's owners, administrators and editors export any layer they can see. Viewers export only the layers an app allows (Viewers export, in Studio when editing the app's layers). A private layer is exported by its author and the people it is shared with as editors. A viewer's file holds the fields the attribute table shows them; fields the app hides are left out.

#Space

Your layers and their files take room in the workspace's plan. An owner or administrator may give each person a limit within it (Studio → People, in the person's panel). Past either limit, new layers, imports, features and files are refused with the space used and allowed; delete what you no longer need, or ask for more.