Drawing Order

The order in which graphics are drawn is important. This order determines which graphics appear on top of other graphics.

TIP: The order in which graphical items are CREATED does not affect the order in which they are DRAWN on screen.

1. The most important factor for drawing order is the overlay order. All items in the first overlay are drawn before all items in the second overlay and so on.
2. This is followed by the item level property.

Change the level of items using the Properties Control Bar or Properties (Home > Selection). (The level is simply a number from 0 to 255 and does not necessarily correspond to height in the real world). Within an overlay all items with level 0 are drawn before all items with level 1 and so on.

3. The last factor for drawing order is the Pen style level. Every Pen is defined to be on a style level. So if two items are in the same overlay and have the same item level, their Pen levels will be used to determine which is drawn first.

This can be used to achieve unique cartographic effects like bordered roads which cross over each other correctly.

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