Implicit Modelling

The traditional method of explicitly defining 3D geological or grade boundaries relies heavily on time consuming digitising of strings or points and then creating a surface or solid. Implicit modelling is an alternative to explicit modelling which relies on a volume function.

This volume function can be used to construct models to represent grade, lithology or a geological surface in 3D and takes away the need for time consuming digitising. The advantage of implicit modelling is that it is less time consuming, and at times it may be better for digitising complex geology. Implicit modelling may also help geologist see trend in there geological data, and pick up faults or folds.

Implicit modelling works on both closely and sparsely drilled data or a combination of both. It will also work well on data that is not systematically drilled (which may be hard to model using explicit modelling methods).

Micromine use a volume function called radial basis function (RBF) to model grade, volumes and surface in 3D space.