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Under review

Did you know? Pit Optimisation & block models

Daria Lvova 9 years ago in Mining updated by Geoff Elson 9 years ago 3
Did you know that Micromine's Pit Optimisation supports two types models - full and 'ore'?
Full model will represent a whole area of interest, including hoist rocks and ore, whereas an ore block model usually represents an ore mineralisation only. By using an ore block model, you can save a lot of time by eliminating the need of adding waste blocks and doing other intermediate steps. But also the optimisation process is more efficient due to the smaller size of the model itself.

But even more, Micromine's Pit Optimisation is the only optimisation module which supports sub-blocked and rotated (with rotation in any direction for ore models) block models.
+1
I have played with the optimizer and run a direct comparisons against other optimizers. Using the assumed waste function/'ore' MicroMine is much faster, like half a minute vs. hours. It's incredibly powerful when combined with macros for evaluating pits quickly.
I would caution however that you really need to understand your waste. Meaning, if you have dense basalt waste and less dense alluvium or you don't fully understand the waste densities the results could vary. A cool feature would be multiple waste regions, or wireframes that represent different rock type/densities.  
Under review
Hi Geoff 

Thank you for the feedback ! It is of great interest to us and really appreciated.  

I agree with you that considering the waste component and accounting for its impact is significant to the result.

Perhaps the options under the Default tab of the Optimiser will be beneficial when it comes to your suggestion about defining different waste types/densities. You could use these options to specify DTMs or Elevations that split out different material times/regions.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Regards

Andy

Cool, that's what I am talking about. That's new or I missed it when I used it a year ago. I think you guys need to do a case study to demonstrate that the same results as Whittle and Vulcan can be achieved, in a fraction of the time. I know both of those softwares insist on every block in the area of the pit be populated which causes incredibly slow processing. Quickness is crucial for testing and checking your work.