If you have two shapenodes with the same zindex on the top level of the diagram, and they overlap, mindfusion will show the newest added node over the older one. The same is true if these nodes are containers.

However, suppose you have two containers with the same zindex, and inside each of them is a shapenode with the same zindex. If these containers overlap, the containers overlap correctly but the shapenodes inside do not appear layered correctly.

It seems like mindfusion should layer nodes inside of a container based first upon the parent container's z-index, with a secondary sort based upon the shapenode's zindex. In the screenshot attached, it seems like the bottom shapenode with zindex 41 should appear behind the container above rather than appear to be floating above it.

I have also attached an xml example from the demo app to demonstrate what I mean.

In this version child nodes are drawn by their container, and Z index values are local to containers:
https://mindfusion.eu/_beta/fcnet_containers_z.zip

It also no longer changes ZIndex values automatically when dropping nodes inside containers, you might have to revise your code if it expects container's ZIndex to be lower than that of its children.

I hope that helps,
Stoyan

This has turned out to be a big change and we still have to fix a few use cases. We should have stable code later next week.