Layer Visibility and Renderability

Visibility and renderability are related attributes that can affect whether or not a layer (or theme) displays on a map.

Visibility determines if and when a layer is visible. The layer is conditionally visible depending on the map's zoom level or scale, known as VisibleRange. If visibility is true and VisibleRange is enabled, the layer displays provided the zoom level or map scale fall within the given range. If visibility is false, then VisibleRange is ignored and the layer is not visible.

If you turn off the visibility of a layer in MapInfo Pro version 15.x, note that when the map is uploaded to Spectrum Spatial using the legacy Map Uploader, the resulting named map and named layers will not include the invisible layer. When the named map is rendered the layer is not available. You will not have the opportunity to turn it back on in Spectrum Spatial. To control the visibility of the layer in Spectrum Spatial, be sure to turn on all layers in MapInfo Pro before uploading the map to Spectrum Spatial. This does not apply to the Map Uploader that was released to work with MapInfo Pro version 16.

Renderability of a layer is determined at runtime. If you are rendering a map that contains a list of layers in the request, the visibility setting is ignored and all layers are rendered. To turn off the renderability of a specific layer, the request must include renderable=false.

If the request is for a named map, which is a pre-defined list of layers, the visibility setting for the layer is considered, instead of the renderability. The map will render with the layers that have visibility=true.

The behavior of visibility and renderability is the same whether the map is rendered via a SOAP or a REST call.