The Basemap

The basemap controls the look and feel of your project, and also contains information. Giraffe uses Mapbox as the architecture for our mapping.

Mapbox styles contain graphics and information. Some styles have very little information, like roads and buildings only. Others have more, like points of interest.

Giraffe comes with 6 default map styles, and you can also add your own Mapbox style.

The default basemap is composed of 4 layers, plus a Mapbox style

Default Layers

All Giraffe projects start with a few layers by default:

• Default - a blank Drawing Layers
• Basemap Group
  • Map labels - Street names, cities, and regions From Mapbox
  • 3D buildings - 3D white building massing from Open Street Map
  • POI Labels - coming soon!
  • Transit Labels - coming soon!
  • Landmark Buildings - coming soon!
  • Trees - coming soon!
• Satellite - Satellite imagery From Mapbox
• The Portfolio Layer is included by default in Spaces only.

New projects and new spaces will start with these 4 layers, plus the Satellite layer (turned off).

Remove any unwanted layers from the … menu on the layer in the Layer Palette

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Add any of these layers to your Templates from the Layer Library.

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Change Map Style

You can change the map style within a saved project. You cannot change the map style in scratchpad.

There are 2 places to change the map style:

Map Toolbar

In the drawing toolbar, click map settings then “map style”

Project Settings

In Project Settings , click “system” then “edit map style”

In both cases, a pop-up appears. Click on a map style from the selector to apply it to your project.

Adding a custom Mapbox Style

If you need further customization beyond the 6 Giraffe default map styles, you can add any published Mapbox style to your project.

In your Mapbox account:

Go to account > Studio

Create a style using Mapbox studio. Save it as a style. (See Mapbox documentation for more information)