Layout and Layers

Two controls decide how a design reads on screen. Layout arranges the components - where they sit relative to one another. Layers decide which of them are drawn at all.

Both are recorded in the design rather than in your browser, so they travel with it: a layout writes the components’ positions, and the Layers panel writes their visibility into the design’s preferences. Anyone else opening the design sees the same arrangement and the same components hidden. What neither touches is configuration - a hidden component is still part of the design and is still deployed, and re-running a layout changes only where components sit.

Change design layout 🔗

The layout control sits in the toolbar at the bottom of the canvas, beside the zoom controls, showing the icon of the layout currently in use. Clicking it fans out the available layouts; picking one re-arranges every component on the canvas with an animated transition, so you can see where things moved to.

A design opened for the first time uses the Constrained layout. Once you drag components by hand, those positions are what the design stores; re-running a layout overwrites them for everyone, so use undo if an automatic arrangement was not what you wanted.

Configure visible layers 🔗

The Layers panel controls what the canvas draws. Open it from the Layers button in the dock, or from the Layers action in the toolbar. Every entry has an eye toggle: switch it off and that entity disappears from the canvas until you switch it back on.

In Designer mode the panel is organized into four sections:

• By type - a single toggle each for Annotations (comments, shapes, text and other non-semantic components) and Configurable Components (the semantic components that actually get deployed). Turning annotations off is the fastest way to see the deployable shape of a design on its own. The count beside each is the number of components of that type in the design.
• Component Badges - Validation Warnings, Deployment Errors and Inventory badges. These are the small markers Kanvas draws on components; hiding them declutters a design that is mid-review. See Interpreting Component Badges.
• Components - every kind present in the design, grouped by model. Expanding a group lists the individual components, each with its own visibility toggle, so you can hide one Deployment without hiding the rest. Clicking a component’s name selects it on the canvas and zooms the view to it.
• Relationships - each relationship kind, type and subtype found in the design, with its own toggle and a count. TagSet relationships appear here under that name.

The header of the panel expands or collapses every section at once.

Because visibility travels with the design, the Layers panel is a way of presenting a design as much as a way of reading one - hide the noise before you hand a design to someone else and they will open it the way you left it.

Render mode 🔗

Layout and layers decide what is drawn and where. Render mode, in the Options drawer, decides how much detail each component is drawn with - from full fidelity down to a wireframe - and can be set to adapt automatically as a design grows. Reach for it when a design has become large enough that panning and zooming feel heavy.

Related Reading

• Canvas Actions
• Cloning a Design
• Configuring Components
• Creating Relationships
• Deleting a Design
• Deploying Designs

Related Videos

Publishing Designs

Design Review Mechanics

Design Reviews in Kanvas

Design Reviews: Adding Comments

Kanvas Designer Overview

Pinning Models to Dock

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