Maptitude Help / Creating Maps / Where a Layer Gets Its Style and Label Settings

Where a Layer Gets Its Style and Label Settings

When you create a new map or add a layer to the map, Maptitude looks in several places to find the style and label settings for a layer:

If the geographic file has a style (.sty) file, Maptitude uses any style, feature display, and label settings, along with settings for any themes and selection sets that are stored in the style file. For more information, see Saving Settings for a Geographic File.
If the geographic file has just a feature display settings (.ST0, .ST1, or .ST2) file, Maptitude uses the settings that are active. For more information, see Using Feature Display Settings.
Any features that still do not have style settings are assigned the default styles for points, lines, or areas. These defaults can be set by choosing the Edit>Preferences command and clicking on the Map tab.

Once in the map, you can change a layer’s styles and labels with the Display Manager and with various commands including the Map>Layers command, the MapWizard buttons for creating themes (Using Themes to Present Information), and the Selection>Settings command for managing selection sets (Queries and Selection Sets). When you save a map or a workspace, all of these settings are saved.

With all of these ways to control the display of features, how does Maptitude decide which takes precedence? There is a strict order that Maptitude follows. First Maptitude checks to see if a feature is in a selection set that is active. If the feature is in more than one active selection set, Maptitude uses the last among them on the selection set list. Otherwise, Maptitude checks whether the feature is thematically mapped, and if so uses the style of the appropriate thematic class. If the feature is not in a theme, Maptitude checks to see if there is a feature display setting for this feature. If no other settings apply, Maptitude will display the feature with the layer settings in the map.