Views, Layers & Overlays

As a diagram grows, the value isn’t in seeing everything at once — it’s in being able to ask focused questions of it. Strata’s Layers & Views and Overlays controls (in the left panel) let you filter, re-style, and analyze the graph without changing the underlying model.

Render modes: 2D · 2D⚡ · 3D

The toggle at the top-right of the canvas switches how the diagram is drawn. All three read the same model and layout — only the painter changes — and your choice is remembered.

2D — the classic diagram (detailed cards with icons, config pills, provider badges, finding/cost/drift markers, and leaf summaries like 7× Security Group). This is the everyday editing view and the best one to print or embed — use Data ▸ Export SVG/PNG for a crisp, scale-independent image.
2D⚡ — the same 2D diagram rendered on the GPU (WebGL). It looks nearly identical but stays smooth at thousands of nodes, where the classic 2D view starts to lag. It supports the full set of edits — select, pan/zoom, drag-to-move, drag-to-reparent, marquee, connect, resize, container focus, and summary expand — and is experimental.
3D — an orbit view where containment depth becomes elevation: an account is a floor plate, each VPC a floor above it, subnets above those, resources on top. Great for reading deeply-nested estates and for demos. Drag to orbit, two-finger-scroll to pan, pinch to zoom, or use the WASD/arrow keys and the on-screen pad; the ⬓ top button gives a straight-down plan view, and explode pulls the layers apart. Selecting a node from search flies the camera to it. 3D is a presentation view — for detailed editing and printing, use 2D.

Layers & filters

Filter what’s on screen by:

Relationship class — toggle Network, Data flow, Dependency, Permission, and Observability edges on or off. Each class has its own colour and line style.
Service category — show or hide whole categories (compute, storage, database, …).

The filter mode decides what happens to filtered-out elements:

Dim — keep them visible but greyed back, so they stay as context.
Hide — remove them from the view entirely.

Edge style

Switch edges between Curved (smooth bezier) and Orthogonal (right-angle routing) under Edges — orthogonal often reads better for dense, grid-like layouts.

View presets

One click applies a curated combination of the filters above:

All — everything visible.
Network — emphasize network connectivity.
Security — emphasize permission relationships.
Data flow — emphasize data movement.
High-level — collapse containers for an at-a-glance overview.

Saved views

Set up the filters you like, type a name under Save current as…, and save it. Saved views are stored in your browser and can be re-applied or deleted later.

Environment tint

Toggle Environment tint to colour nodes by their account/environment — prod, staging, dev, and so on — so multi-account or multi-environment diagrams are easy to read at a glance.

Analytical overlays

Overlays trace the relationship graph to answer a specific question, lighting the relevant resources and dimming the rest. They’re selection-aware — select a node first to trace from it; with nothing selected they show the whole picture.

IAM trust — follows permission edges (allows, assumes, grants) to show the trust chain.
Network paths — follows traffic-bearing edges (routes_to, connects_to, peers_with, attached_to, and load-balancer targets) to show reachability. Connections that cross the internet boundary — those touching an Internet Gateway, NAT Gateway, CloudFront, API Gateway, or an internet-facing load balancer — are drawn orange (external), and the internet-facing nodes get an orange ring; everything else stays blue (internal). A small legend appears in the panel. If there are no network relationships yet, the overlay is a no-op (it won’t dim the canvas) and a hint explains why.
Heat (degree) — tints each node by how many connections it has, surfacing the busiest hubs in the architecture.
None — clears the overlay.

Overlays are a topology view derived from the diagram’s relationships — they trace the edges you’ve drawn or imported, not live security-group rules or real traffic.

Presentation mode

Click ▶ in the toolbar (or run Presentation mode from the command palette) to enter a clean, read-only view for sharing or demos: the palette is hidden and editing is disabled, but you can still pan, zoom, and click nodes to inspect them. Click Exit presentation to return to editing.