Category Overview

What is a Category?

A Category is the next level of organization in Layer under Projects.

Categories contain Elements and Fields .

You can think of a Layer Category as analogous to a tab in a spreadsheet - it should contain distinct fields (columns) and separate elements (rows) from the other categories. Elements and Fields are restricted to a single category and cannot be copied between categories. Like tabs in a spreadsheet, categories contain very little information outside of the structure of their Elements , the real home of your data in Layer. You can have an unlimited number of Categories in your project.

When to use a new Category

New categories should be created for managing new data types. If you would use a new tab in a spreadsheet to organize your data, you should probably create a new category. If you find yourself recreating fields from one category to another or wishing they could be copied, you likely could be using the same category.

💡If you’re summarizing similar types of data, an additional category can be used to provide a higher level of abstraction between related pieces of data. For more information, see Category Relationships.