Volumes and plans

What a stockpile holds, what moved, and a sheet you can print.

Everything on this page happens inside one open survey, from Mining → Surveys.

Two different questions

They look alike and they are not the same question, so they are answered in two separate panels.

Panel	Answers
Volume above a level	What a stockpile, a pad or a dump holds against a datum.
Change since an earlier survey	What moved between two surveys of the same ground.

The second is the one that reconciles against the weighbridge.

Cut and fill are never netted into one figure

Both are always reported separately. A net of zero can hide fifty thousand cubic metres moved in both directions, and on its own it is not an answer to any question a surveyor is actually asked.

Volume above a level

Set Volume above level to the floor, the pad, or whatever datum you are reporting to. You get three figures:

• Above the level, in cubic metres — the material that is there.
• Below it — where the ground falls under your datum.
• Over, in square metres — the plan area the figure was measured across.

Contours every draws contours on the plan at 0.5 m, 1 m, 2 m or 5 m, or turns them off.

Change since an earlier survey

Choose an earlier survey of the same ground. Only surveys of the same item appear in the list; if it is empty, nothing earlier has been filed against this item yet.

You get:

Figure	What it is
Cut	Material removed between the two surveys, m³
Fill	Material placed, m³
Net	The difference, shown but never shown alone
Measured over	The plan area the comparison covered, m²
Same, by 1 m grid	The same cut and fill, measured a second way
The two methods differ by	How far apart they are, as a percentage

The second opinion is the point

The headline figure comes from the triangulated surfaces. The check figure comes from the classic 1 m grid prism method — the one a surveyor can reproduce by hand on a sheet of paper, and the one a client's engineer will use to argue with you.

More than one percent apart is a warning, not a rounding difference

Where the two methods disagree by more than 1%, the page says so. It usually means the two surveys do not cover the same ground, or one of them is missing a feature string the other has. Find out which before you report either number.

A third method, for linear work

On a road, a ramp, a trench or a drain, sections are how the work is designed, set out and paid for — so a figure that cannot be tied back to a chainage is a figure that has to be argued about.

The sections panel cuts cross-sections across an alignment and reports an end-area volume with its chainages, beside the surface's own figure and the difference between them.

It is offered, not imposed

End-area is only as good as the spacing of its sections. Across a wide body like a pit or a dump the triangulated method is better and the end-area figure should not be quoted. Two figures that agree are worth more than one figure asserted, so neither replaces the other.

Measuring inside a boundary

Measure inside limits every volume on the page to one area, instead of the whole survey.

A boundary is kept against the item, not against the survey — so this month's figure and next month's are over exactly the same ground, which is the only way a monthly series means anything.

You can:

• Draw a new boundary on the plan.
• Import an area somebody set out in Surpac or CAD, so both sides measure the same ground.
• Rename, export (Surpac string or DXF, on the mine grid) or remove the chosen one.
• Combine the chosen one with another boundary on the same item, below.

A boundary that is not on this ground is refused

An area sharing no ground at all with the survey is refused outright, and the page says how far away it is. An area that merely hangs over the edge is accepted and reported — a block is often set out past the toe on purpose.

Drawing one by number

While a boundary is being drawn, a point can be placed by number rather than by hand: a Distance in metres from the last point, a Bearing in degrees clockwise from north, or both. A bearing on its own makes a rail — the point slides along that line as the pointer moves. A stated number beats any catch, so a boundary set out from a peg lands exactly where the peg says.

Points otherwise catch on the geometry already drawn — crests, strings and block edges — and the mark beside the pointer says what it caught, so a crest and the block edge a metre behind it are not confused at that zoom. Catch on shots lets a point land on the survey's own shots as well; it is off by default, because on a dense pickup there is a shot near almost everywhere.

Two boundaries over the same ground

A boundary is drawn as an outline, so two of them over the same ground do not look wrong on the plan — and they report the same material twice, adding to more than moved. Filing an outline that strays over another therefore stops to ask, with three answers:

Answer	What it does
File it anyway	Both stand. Sometimes exactly what a site means — a pit and the stage inside it are measured apart on purpose.
Trim to fit	Cuts the new outline back to the ground the others do not already claim, and says how much ground that gives up before you choose.
Go back	Keeps drawing.

An outline is trimmed only against boundaries it crosses or swallows, never against one it sits wholly inside — trimming against a container could only leave nothing, and a stage drawn inside the pit crest is the overlap a site means. Where trimming would leave no single outline — a hole, or two pieces — the reason is stated and the third answer is not offered. Boundaries that merely share an edge are not an overlap.

Combining two boundaries

Combine makes a third boundary from two that are already filed against the item, and leaves both originals exactly as they were, so every volume already reported inside them still reads.

Make	You get
One boundary round both	The ground inside either — two blocks that have become one bench.
Only the shared ground	The ground inside both — the part of a design that falls inside the lease.

The dialog states the area the result encloses before you file it, and refuses with a reason where no single outline can say what the combination is: two boundaries that do not touch cannot be joined into one, a join that would leave a hole between them is refused, two that do not overlap share no ground, and shared ground that comes in pieces is not one boundary either. Draw the ground between them first. A name is suggested from the two you chose.

Reading the plan

The plan is the primary view; the figures sit beside it, or fold out of the way on a narrow screen.

Shade the plan by paints the ground by level, the way a surveyor reads it, or by slope — every face coloured by how steeply it lies. Once you have chosen a comparison, the plan shows how far the ground moved instead. Relief turns the movement into a solid you can rotate.

Slope is fixed in degrees, not stretched to the survey

A 35-degree wall is the same colour on every survey, so an over-steep bench, a ramp above grade and a batter at repose each stand out as one colour wherever they are — and two surveys of the same pit can be compared by eye.

Colour scale decides how much movement saturates the colour. It is read from this survey unless you pin it.

Pin the scale to compare two periods

Left to itself, each survey colours to its own range, so a quiet month and a busy one look identical. Pin the scale and the colour means the same thing in both.

Wider plan folds the figures away and gives the plan the whole width; View full screen on the plan or the relief takes the whole screen, and the tooltips and dialogs follow it there.

A picture of the ground

An aerial or drone image can be laid under the plan. Choose the Picture, then place it by the ground either with its World file — the .jgw, .pgw or .tfw sidecar the flight software writes, six numbers that say which ground the picture covers — or by typing the eastings of its West and East edges and the northings of its South and North edges. Shows through sets how strongly it reads under the shading.

A rotated picture is refused rather than put down crooked

A world file that rotates the image is refused, because a crooked picture is wrong everywhere and right enough in the middle that nobody checks the edges. Have it written north-up. The picture is drawn over the shading and under the contours, so it is seen exactly where the survey did not reach.

Measuring off the plan

Measure turns the plan into something you can ask a question of. Click along a run and double-click to finish. Points catch on the crests, strings and blocks already drawn — which is what makes a measurement repeatable: two people measuring the same feature get the same number — or are placed by number, as when drawing a boundary.

The readout gives, for the run and for every leg:

Figure	What it is
In plan	The length across the map. A setting-out offset is this.
Over the ground	The slope length. A haul distance is this.
End to end	The straight line from first point to last.
Enclosed	The area, where the run closes.
Bearing, rise and grade	Per leg, and for the run as a whole.

Both lengths are always reported, because quoting either as the distance is how a bench ends up in the wrong place. The surface decides the level at every point, never the geometry that was caught: a block corner carries no level, and off the survey the level is unknown rather than zero, so a leg with an unknown end reports its plan length and no rise.

A ramp at no more than N % states the steepest grade a loaded truck can pull — ten percent is usual — and the readout answers with the centreline that grade needs for the rise you measured. Use as distance puts that length in the Distance field, so the next line you draw is exactly long enough. Design a ramp along this takes the run into Mine designs as a ramp centreline, with its start level and grade already filled in from the ground.

The measurement exports as a document but is deliberately not shareable into chat: it is a working figure, and a one-click path to a recipient invites it to be quoted as a surveyed one.

Several surveys at once

Add other surveys as layers. The survey you are on is the one that is shaded and measured. Any others are drawn as contours in their own colour on the plan, and as wireframes in relief — which is how a plan carries several surveys without turning to mud.

Each layer offers Measure against this survey (which makes it the comparison) and Take it off the screen.

The plan sheet

Plan sheet draws the survey at a stated scale, to print or to file.

Setting	What it does
Scale	A length measured off the printed sheet with a rule is that length on the ground
Notes	Printed in the title block — anything a reader needs in order to trust the figures

Then Print at the stated scale, or download the sheet as an image at print resolution.

Keep a series at one scale

Plans at a single scale can be laid over each other on a light table, which is still the fastest way to see what a month did.

A blast pattern prints on this same sheet, with every hole marked and named — see Drill and blast.

Reconciling against the weighbridge

The last panel answers a question no survey can answer on its own: does what the ground says came out agree with what crossed the bridge?

1. Enter the bulk density, in tonnes per cubic metre. Broken rock in a truck is near 1.6, solid rock near 2.6, loose sand near 1.4.
2. The tonnes weighed over the same days are read from the weighbridge module where you hold it. Where you do not, type the total off the tickets — the comparison works the same either way.

Density is the only bridge between a volume and a mass

The survey cannot measure it. Every tonnage on this page is visibly your volume multiplied by the number you supplied, which is why the field is on screen rather than buried in a setting.

Read the result in the two directions it can fail:

• A cut with no tonnes behind it is material that went somewhere unrecorded.
• Tonnes with no cut behind them are loads that were never dug.

The weighbridge states no unit

The weighbridge module stores a bare mass, so you tell this panel whether it is recording kilograms, tonnes or pounds. Getting it wrong is a factor of a thousand, which is why the choice is asked rather than assumed.

Volume by block

Most sites refer to ground by block. Under Volume by block (or Movement by block once a comparison is set) every volume measured inside a boundary is attributed to the blocks it came out of, including ground nobody has surveyed, which still gets a name.

Define blocks sets the lattice: the south-west corner of the first block on the mine grid, the block width and height (200 m is usual), a bearing where the lattice runs along strike, and the naming rule, rows lettered and columns numbered or both numbered, with an optional prefix and padding.

Column	Meaning
Cut, Fill	What moved inside this block, m³.
Grid net	The same block measured a second time by the grid method, when Check against the grid method is on.
Measured	The plan area actually reached by both surveys, m².
Covered	Whether the block was fully or only partly surveyed. A small figure on a partly-covered block means a small survey, not a quiet month.

Moving the blocks makes a new version

Figures already reported keep reading on the lattice they were measured against. A change of naming only disturbs nothing. Click a block name in the table to give it the site's own name.

Naming a block on the plan itself

Right-click the block on the plan and it asks for its name — or, on a phone or tablet, hold a finger on it for half a second. A plain click is left to the plan: it is what pans the drawing and what places boundary corners and measurement points, so the lattice does not answer to it.

When something looks wrong

What you see	Why, and what to do
The two methods differ by more than 1%	The surveys do not cover the same ground, or one is missing a feature string. Compare their extents before reporting either figure.
The comparison list is empty	Nothing earlier has been filed against this item. Only surveys of the same item can be compared.
A boundary was refused	It shares no ground with this survey — usually set out on a different grid or against a different pit.
Filing a boundary stopped to ask about an overlap	It strays over a boundary already filed, and the two would report the same material twice. File it anyway if that is meant, or Trim to fit.
Combine is greyed out	It needs a chosen boundary and a second one on the same item to combine with.
A picture was refused	Its world file rotates it. Have the image written north-up, or type the four edges instead.
A measured leg shows a length but no rise	One end is off the survey, where the level is unknown rather than zero.
Two months look identical in colour	The colour scale is being read per survey. Pin it.
The net is zero but material clearly moved	That is exactly why net is never reported alone. Read cut and fill.
The tonnage is out by roughly a thousand	The weighbridge's mass unit is set wrong on the reconciliation panel.