04: Visibility Control and Data Layers

Overview

AXIS Maps is built on a layered data model. Each layer type controls a specific aspect of the map's appearance — from base geography and borders through to terrain, buildings, labels, and water visibility. Layers can be toggled on or off and individually configured.

Base data selection

The base data selection determines which underlying geographic dataset powers the map. This is set when creating a map and defines what data layers (roads, water, land, etc.) are available.

Base data is selected from the available OpenStreetMap-based datasets configured for the application.

Borders

The Borders feature allows you to control the visibility of different types of geographic borders on the map. You can show or hide national, regional, and local administrative borders independently.

To manage borders:

1. Open the Feature Panel and click on Raise Color.
2. Toggle the border types you want to show or hide
3. Adjust border line weight and color using the style controls.

Boundaries — continental and regional

In addition to political borders, AXIS Maps supports geographic boundary data for continents and sub-regions. This allows designers to highlight or select entire continents and regions as areas of interest.

Continental boundary datasets available include Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, Central America, Caribbean, and South America. Extended country-level coverage (such as UK constituent countries) is also available.

To apply boundaries:

• Open the Feature Panel and click on Raise Color.
• Choose the desired boundary level in Border Type (continental, regional, country, or other).
• Apply fill color or styling via the Style Panel.

Terrain/Elevation layer

The Terrain layer provides a visual representation of elevation, enhancing map storytelling by highlighting topographical variations and landscape features.

To enable terrain:

1. Open the Feature Panel and click on Visibility Options.
2. Toggle the Elevation layer on.

Note: The Elevation layer is best used with maps that require geographic context such as conflict zones, natural disaster areas, or sports events in mountainous regions.

Buildings and Hillshade layers

The 3D Buildings layer integrates building footprints and heights into the map view. It demonstrates the platform's capability to support multiple custom data layers and is particularly useful for urban context maps.

Enable the Buildings layer in the Visibility Options. Buildings appear as 3D extruded shapes when the map has sufficient zoom and pitch. Just selected Areas have support for buildings; this set can be expanded using your custom data source.

The Hillshade layer is a shaded-relief rendering technique that simulates the appearance of sunlight falling across terrain. It creates a realistic sense of depth and dimensionality by using light and shadow to communicate elevation changes — making hills, valleys, and mountain ranges immediately legible to viewers.

Roads and visibility control

The Roads layer allows users to control the visibility of road networks on the map. Individual road classes can be shown or hidden:

• Motorways and major highways
• Primary and secondary roads
• Minor roads and local streets
• Paths and footways

Highlight each road level and Road Shield density using sliders in action panel.

Street and Area Labels

The Street and Area Labels feature provides granular control over how labels are displayed on the map. Users can adjust:

• Label granularity — which geographic levels show labels (country, city, district, street)
• Label visibility — show or hide specific label types
• Label language — controlled by the Localization setting

Access label controls from the Feature Panel > Labels section.

Visibility options

When creating your maps, you need to be able to toggle on and off the tools and layers required to tell your story. AXIS Maps provides a centralized Visibility Options panel that controls the display of all map elements.

All tools for map creation are available with a standard AXIS Maps license.

Toggleable map layers

The following layers can be toggled on or off from the Visibility Options panel. Each can be enabled or disabled independently without affecting other layers:

Localization

The Localization feature allows map elements — including country names, city names, and other labels — to be displayed in a selected language. This is configured at the project level in Map Settings (Project Defaults) and applies consistently across the map.

Supported localization options are defined by the geographic data available for each region and can be expanded.