Styling GIS Layers

Every imported or computed GIS layer can be styled independently — you can control fill colour, stroke width, point shape, labels, and data-driven classification. Styles are saved per layer and are visible to all users. When a layer is synced to the mobile app, the style travels with it so field teams see consistent colours and symbology.

Opening the Style Editor

1. Navigate to any page that shows a GIS layer list (a survey map, site map, or GIS layers panel)
2. Click the palette icon (🎨) on the layer you want to style
3. The Layer Style Editor slides in from the right

Quick Presets

At the top of the editor, six preset styles cover the most common layer types used in environmental and heritage consulting:

Click a preset to apply it. You can then fine-tune the settings on the tabs below.

Style Tabs

Fill

Controls how polygon interiors are coloured.

• Fill Colour — Use the colour picker or enter a hex value directly (e.g. #2D6A4F)
• Fill Opacity — Slide to make the fill more or less transparent. 0% is fully transparent (no fill); 100% is fully opaque.

Stroke

Controls the outline of polygons and the appearance of lines.

• Stroke Colour — Colour of the outline
• Stroke Width — Thickness in pixels (0.5–8 px)
• Stroke Opacity — Transparency of the outline
• Line Style — Solid, Dashed, or Dotted

Point

Controls markers for point features.

• Point Shape — Circle, Square, Triangle, Diamond, or Cross
• Point Colour — Fill colour for the marker
• Radius — Size of the marker in pixels (2–20)

Labels

Adds text labels to features on the map.

• Label Field — Select which attribute to display as a label. Leave blank to disable labels.
• Font Size — Text size in pixels (10–24)
• Label Colour — Text colour
• Text Halo — Adds a white outline around the text for legibility on dark backgrounds
• Placement — Where to position the label relative to the feature (center, above, below, left, right)
• Min Zoom — Labels only appear when zoomed in past this zoom level. Keeps the map clean at small scales.

Classify

Colour-code features by an attribute value (data-driven symbology).

1. Select a field from the dropdown — for example, site_type or veg_class
2. Click Generate — TerraSitu reads the unique values in that field and creates one colour class per value
3. Each class row shows the value and its assigned colour. Click a colour swatch to change it.
4. Optionally click Colour Ramp to apply a d3-scale-chromatic colour scheme across all classes:
   • Sequential (Blues, Greens, Oranges…) — best for ordered or numeric data
   • Diverging (RdBu, Spectral…) — best for data with a meaningful midpoint
   • Qualitative (Set1, Set2, Tableau10) — best for unordered categorical data like site type or land use

Applying and Saving

Click Apply Style to save. The map updates immediately. The style is available to all users viewing this layer and is included when the layer is synced to the mobile app.

Resetting to Defaults

Click the reset icon (↺) in the editor header to restore the layer's default automatic colouring. This removes any custom style settings.

Related Articles

• Importing GIS data
• Running Spatial Operations
• Exporting map figures