# Layout and Layers > Arrange the components in a design automatically, and choose which entities the canvas draws. 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 bottom-left corner of the canvas, 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. The zoom controls sit at the opposite corner, bottom-right. | Layout | Shape it produces | Suits | | --- | --- | --- | | Constrained | A force-directed arrangement that respects grouping and containment | The default, and the best general-purpose choice | | Grid | Even rows and columns | Inventories and flat sets of similar components | | Hierarchical | A layered, top-down tree following the direction of relationships | Designs with a clear flow, such as ingress to service to workload | | Star | Concentric rings around the most connected components | Finding the hubs in a design | | Bus | A breadth-first arrangement fanning out from a root | Tracing what a component reaches, level by level | | Ring | A single circle | Small designs, and comparing components at a glance | 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.
Empty design canvas with callout pointing to the layout control
Layout control callout on a new design (anonymous capture, Sep 2026). Open the control near the bottom-left of the canvas to pick Grid, Constrained, Hierarchical, and related layouts.
## Configure visible layers The **Layers** panel controls what the canvas draws. Open it from the **Layers** button in the toolbar above the canvas, beside Comments, Actions and Share. Every entry has an eye toggle: switch it off and that entity disappears from the canvas until you switch it back on. The Layers panel in Kanvas Designer
Layers panel listing annotations, configurable components, badges, and component kinds
Layers panel (anonymous capture, Sep 2026): By Type, Component Badges, and Components. Filename in the audit set is historical — this shot is the Layers drawer, not the per-component configurator.
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](/kanvas/designer/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.