Appearance
Mining
Ground measured, and ground interpreted.
For surveyors, geologists, mining engineers and anyone who has to defend a volume, a tonnage or a grade.
New here? From exploration to production walks the whole module in order — a drillhole database to a published plan — and links out to the detail as it goes. The pages below describe a screen each.
Printable: Mining user guide (PDF) — the same guide laid out for a desk, a cab or a workshop wall.
What this module is for
Two jobs that are always done by the same people, on the same site, against the same ground:
- Measuring what is there. Points come off an instrument, become a surface, and the difference between two surfaces is what moved.
- Interpreting what is under it. Drillholes become solids, solids become a block model, and the model is what a schedule and a cut-off decision are made from.
They are one module because they are one licence and one conversation. A survey with no geology behind it measures a hole nobody can value; drillholes with no way to survey against them are a database nobody can reconcile.
The one idea to hold on to
Nothing derived is stored. A surface is triangulated from its points every time it is opened. A pit's benches are generated from its slope rules. A wireframe's volume is re-measured from its own sections. A grade-tonnage curve is read off the model on the spot.
That is the difference between this module and a folder of spreadsheets: a stored figure can disagree with the record it came from, and by the time anybody notices, it has been in three reports.
It does the work itself
This module is not a viewer, and it is not a front end onto somebody else's package. Every figure on every screen is computed here:
- Points are triangulated into a surface, honouring the breaklines the surveyor picked up.
- Volumes are measured three ways — a triangulated surface, a 1 m grid, and end-area sections — so any figure can be checked against another.
- Drillholes are validated and desurveyed, and samples composited.
- Wireframes are built from section outlines and checked for closure.
- Grades are estimated onto a block model by ordinary kriging, inverse distance or nearest neighbour, and the grade-tonnage curve read off it.
- Pits, ramps and drill rings are generated from their own parameters.
- Next period is planned bench by bench from the survey and the model — or optimised across the whole horizon — and the plan is published onto the parameters the shifts already file against.
You do not need a second package to get a volume, a resource, a pit or a schedule out of Trackapt.
And it speaks the industry's file formats, both ways
Nobody starts from nothing. You have years of surveys, a drillhole database, and a colleague who wants the plan in the package they already know — so the module reads and writes the industry's formats in both directions.
See Working with other packages for the full list of what reads in and what writes out, how a plan is handed to a scheduling package such as Deswik NOVA and its schedule read back, and how to bring an existing database across.
What it does not do
- It does not sign off a resource. It produces the figures and shows their working; a competent person still signs.
- It does not invent a density. You state it, and every mass on every screen is visibly a volume multiplied by the number you gave.
- It is not a general CAD drafting package. It draws what a surveyor and a geologist need to read and to check, not an arbitrary drawing.
Everything it produces leaves in a form another package can open — surfaces, solids, designs and block models alike. See Working with other packages.
The eleven screens
| Menu entry | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Surveys | The register of surfaces. Open one to draw it, measure it and print it. |
| Pickups | The shots as they came off the instrument, and where a feature line is corrected. |
| Drillholes | The hole database, and whether it is sound. |
| Wireframes | Interpretations as closed solids, each re-measured on sight. |
| Block models | The deposit counted into blocks, and the grade-tonnage curve read off it. |
| Seams | A thin, dipping seam — a chromitite, a reef — modelled as a grid of floor, thickness and grade, rather than as blocks. |
| Mine designs | Pits, ramps and underground drill rings, generated from their own parameters. |
| Plans | What a pit will produce next period, read from the survey and the model, and published where the dashboards judge it. |
| Underground | How an underground mine drills, what it drills with and the rock it drills in, and the development rounds and stope rings designed from them. |
| Blasts | The pattern each bench is drilled and fired to, from the first draft to the muckpile. |
| Magazines | What each explosives magazine holds, product by product, and its register of everything in and out. |
They sit under Mining in the sidebar. If you cannot see it, the module is not switched on for your account — see Turning modules on.
How Mining opens: Professional or Modular
Mining can open for you in one of two ways, called the Mining view. You choose it in the Appearance dialog — Themes in the header, or Preferences… on the workspace's Home tab — under Mining view. It is offered only when your account has the Mining module.
| View | The sidebar | Opening Mining | A link to a register or a record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | One Mining entry, which opens the workspace. | Lands on the workspace. | Opens inside the workspace, in a window over it. |
| Modular | Mining with its screens under it: Workspace first, then Surveys, Pickups, Drillholes and the rest, one entry each. | Lands on Surveys. | Opens as its own page. |
- Professional is the default: you have it until you choose otherwise. It is the frame Surpac, Deswik and ArcGIS users already work in — every survey, hole, design and blast of a pit on one screen, with records opening in windows over it. The workspace opens maximised on a screen wide enough for its side-by-side panes, with the app's header, menu and footer put away, and asks the browser for full screen as you arrive. A link the workspace cannot open in a window, such as a new drill ring, still opens as a page.
- Modular keeps each register and record on its own screen, listed in the sidebar, the way the screens above are described. The workspace is still there, as the first entry under Mining; it opens with the app's header and menu in place and never asks for full screen.
The workspace describes its ribbon, Explorer, picture and Properties, and a blast from design to firing on it.
Either way, once you have maximised the workspace or given the menu back, the workspace remembers that on the device, and your choice wins over the view's starting point.
The choice applies as you make it: the sidebar changes at once, and the page you are on is left where it is. Switch to Modular while you are in the workspace and the app's header and menu come back straight away.
It is kept in this browser, for you and this account. Someone else signing in on the same browser keeps their own choice, and on another browser or device you choose again.
Seeing below the ground in 3D
In the workspace's 3D view a surface at 100% opacity is solid, so holes and solids below the ground stay hidden under it. To see them, select the surface, press Colour in Properties and lower its Opacity. The picture changes as you slide; press Apply to keep the new opacity, or Cancel to put the old one back.
A design you are drawing in a form docked beside the picture follows the same rule: a blast's holes, its tie-up and its outline, a boundary, a pickup, a ramp, a planned hole, and an underground round or set of rings. Under a surface at 100% the parts below the ground are hidden, so an underground design is hidden whole, just as a saved one is. Lower the surface's opacity to see them. In plan the design is always drawn on top.
While you design a blast, the switches beside Show muckpile hide parts of the design so you can see what lies under them:
- Show holes draws each hole, collar to toe. While the holes are hidden, the tools that click on a hole are off.
- Show tie-up draws the connectors and the rings round the firing points.
- Show outline draws the block's outline, its free face and its back line.
The switches change only what you see. Nothing in the blast changes, and they are all on again the next time the form opens.
With the muckpile shown, Muck opacity sets how see-through the heap is drawn, from 0% to 100%. It starts at 55%. At 100% the heap is solid and hides the holes and ground behind it. Slide it and watch the picture, then press Apply to keep it on this device or Cancel to put it back.
A saved blast can show its muckpile too. Select the blast in the Explorer and turn on Show muckpile in Properties: the heap the blast is predicted to leave is drawn in 3D, with its toe outline in plan, worked out the same way the blast form works it out. Like a design, it is hidden under a surface at 100% and seen through one you have made see-through. Its Muck opacity is the same setting the blast form uses. The choice is kept for each blast on this device, and the muckpile shows while the blast itself is turned on. A blast that is not tied up has no muckpile to show, and Properties says so.
Where to start
| If you want to | Read |
|---|---|
| Find your way round the workspace, or design, approve and fire a blast on the picture | The workspace |
| Get a survey off an instrument and into Trackapt | Surveys and pickups |
| Report what moved, or what a stockpile holds | Volumes and plans |
| Build a resource from drillholes | Drillholes, wireframes and block models |
| Lay out a pit, a ramp or a drill ring | Mine designs |
| Plan next month's waste and product, and measure the shifts against it | Plans |
| Bring years of work across from Surpac, Datamine or acQuire | Working with other packages |
Access
The same rule as every other module bar attendance: a survey belongs to a tracker group, and you see it if you are whitelisted on that group. Clearance decides what you may do; the whitelist decides what you may reach.
Every survey also names the item it is of — a dump, a stockpile, a pit, a bench. That is not decoration:
Only surveys of the same item can be compared
Cut and fill are measured between two surveys of one piece of ground. Choosing the wrong item at import is the mistake that quietly makes a survey uncomparable, and it is corrected by re-importing rather than by editing.
Units and grid
Everything is stored and exported on the mine grid — the coordinates your instrument and your survey package already use. Nothing is re-projected and no local origin ever leaves the screen it was needed on.
Volumes are cubic metres, areas square metres, levels metres. Masses are tonnes, and only ever appear where you have supplied a density.