The Export → Coverage (477/BDC) feature in cnHeat allows the user to generate polygon coverage maps.
To view the Geopackage or Shapefile (.zip) coverage polygons in QGIS please follow these instructions.
Setting up QGIS
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Open QGIS. (For this walkthrough we are using QGIS 3.26.1.)
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Confirm that your Coordinate Reference System (CRS) is to EPSG:4326:
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Click the CRS in the bottom-right of the screen.
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Select EPSG:4326 and click OK
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Adding layers to QGIS
Note: cnHeat has four steps under the Export > Coverage (477/BDC) feature. Steps 3 and 4 offer the ability to download coverage polygons. Unzipping these files will present a .gpkg and a .zip (shapefile) of polygon coverage. These are identical. You can load either. The process is identical.
Load the cnHeat coverage polygon
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Open the Data Source Manager with either Ctrl+L or by clicking this icon in the toolbar:
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Make sure Vector is selected from the left and load either the .gpkg file or the .zip (shapefile) from the zip file downloaded in Step 3 or 4 of the cnHeat Coverage Export tool.
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Click Add.
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Click Add Layers.
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Click Close to close the Data Source Manager dialogue to be taken to the map view.
Results should look something like this:
Adding an OpenStreetMap layer
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Under the browser dialogue on the left navigate to “XYZ Tiles”. Expand to show OpenStreetMap.
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Right-click OpenStreetMap and select Add Layer to Project.
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In the Layers window, left-click and drag the OpenStreetMap to the bottom of the list so that the
broadband_coverage displays on top of OpenStreetMaps.
Change Styling
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To change the styling of a coverage layer, right-click on the layer in the Layers window and choose
Properties… -
Select Symbology. From here the Color and Opacity can be adjusted along with many other settings.
