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. They open in every app of the workspace, and nobody else sees them until you share them. The workspace's owners, administrators and editors make them; viewers see the ones shared with them.

The workspace's owners and administrators can open every private layer, read-only, and hand one to another person or delete it (Studio → Datasets → Private layers).

#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.
• 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. Choose the Coordinate system when the file has none (CAD and CSV usually do not). The import runs in the background: you can close the window, and the layers appear when they are ready.
• 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: Rename, Style (colours, categories by a field, labels), Share, Submit to the workspace… and Delete.

#Sharing

Share works as it does for drawings: add people by name as Viewer or Editor, open the layer to everyone in the workspace, or to anyone with the link — as viewers or editors. 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.

#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). With features selected, Only the selected features exports just those. 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.

#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 → Members). 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.