I've also had this kind of topological knowingness which I couldn't name. Another comment here says "schematic conceptual" which captures what it feels like for me.
Another good explanation here is that it's all taking place but that last step of creating the visual is suppressed (as intended) while conscious as that would be hallucinating.
I feel that I could visualize internally but there's a curtain pulled over the visualization part of it. It's there, i feel it but it's blocked from my sight somehow. I've built intuitive ways to probe the imagination so I technically experience my image-less visualization. However, when I attempt to visualize something more complex (there are a lot of elements or minutiae) I'm reaching my intuitive limits. When it comes to auditory imagination, I can literally listen to a song from my own head all day long with no effort.
Yes. Reminds me of "Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing" vs "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things" -- Henri Poincaré. Set of spacial facts is what's left when all the incidental embellishments are removed--pure abstraction.
Another good explanation here is that it's all taking place but that last step of creating the visual is suppressed (as intended) while conscious as that would be hallucinating.