Appearance
The workspace
Every survey, hole, design and blast of a pit on one screen — and the place a blast is designed, approved, charged, fired and looked back on.
Mining → Workspace (in the Professional view, the one Mining entry)
The workspace is one picture of the ground with everything filed against it drawn in place: surveys, drillholes, wireframes, block models, mine designs, blasts and underground rounds. Around the picture sit four things you work with:
| Part | Where | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| The ribbon | Across the top | Every command, in tabs: Home, Survey, Geology, Design, Blast, and a tab named for the active layer. |
| The Explorer | Down the left | The mines, their workings, and every layer of each, to draw, hide, select and colour. |
| The picture | The middle | Plan, sections and 3D, with the status bar under it. |
| Properties | Down the right | What the selected layer is, and what can be done with it. A form you are working in — a blast design, a pickup, a volume — docks here too, beside the picture. |
Under the picture, a docked table lists the active layer's records. Registers and records — Surveys, Blasts, one blast — open in windows over the workspace, so the picture stays where you left it.
How Mining opens, and when the workspace takes the whole window, is set by the Mining view: see How Mining opens.
The ribbon
Each tab holds groups of commands. A command that cannot be used just now is greyed, and resting the pointer on it mostly says why — no working chosen, no survey to measure, a browser without WebGL, or an access level you do not hold. Design blast with no working chosen is greyed without a reason: choose a working in the Explorer first.
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Home | View: Plan view, Section looking north, Section looking east, 3D view, Fit All to View, and Snap: vertex / Snap: off. Section: Step section towards me and Step section away, Clip to the slab / Draw everything behind, and Section line for a section anywhere, with View section, Profile and Look the other way. Inquire: Measure and Box select. Layers: Refresh layers and Add selected to view. Panes: show or hide the Explorer, Properties and the table, fold the Explorer to icons, or show it as a tree. Session: Save my workspace, Open saved workspace, Forget saved workspace. Screen: Maximise the workspace, Full screen, Collapse the ribbon (Ctrl+F1) and Preferences…. |
| Survey | Draw every survey / Hide every survey, Import survey, Pick up points, Pick up string, Draw boundary, Measure volume, and the Surveys and Pickups registers. |
| Geology | Draw drillholes / Hide every drillhole, Draw every wireframe / Hide every wireframe, Check the holes, Plan a hole, Import drillholes, and the Drillholes, Wireframes, Block models and Seams registers. |
| Design | Digitise a string, Edit string points, Edit outline, Undo and Redo, Save strings as Surpac .str, Save strings as DXF and Save the string as a design, Estimate a grade, Optimise a pit, Lay out stopes, and the Mine designs, Plans and Underground registers. |
| Blast | Draw every blast / Hide every blast, Design blast, New blast, the Blasts register, and, for underground, Design a round. |
| The active layer's tab | Named for what the active layer is — Blast layer, Survey layer. Fit to View, Hide layer or Draw layer, Open record, and the tools that layer offers. |
Find a command, at the top of the workspace, finds any command by what you type — new blast, kriging, 3D, hide table — and Enter runs the first match. Commands that cannot be used just now are left out of what it finds.
The Explorer
Mines are listed first, each with its workings under it; a working in no mine is under Other Workings. Press a working's row to make it the active working: the ribbon, its registers and new work follow it, and the row shows an Active tag. Its tick opens it and draws its newest survey, or closes it and takes its layers out of the picture. The workspace holds up to 8 workings open at once; past that it says so, and closing one makes room.
Under each working, its layers are grouped by kind: Surveys, Drillholes, Wireframes, Block models, Mine designs, Blasts, Underground blasts, Survey boundaries, Pickups, Digitised strings, Section lines and Volumes. A group row counts how many are drawn of how many are listed.
- Tick a layer to draw it, untick it to hide it. A group's tick draws or hides every one in it.
- Click a layer's name to select it: its properties show on the right, its records in the table, and the ribbon follows it.
- Drag a layer or a working onto the picture to draw it and fly to it; Enter on a selected layer does the same. On a touch screen, press and hold to start the drag.
The row menu. Right-click a row — or long-press it, or use the menu key or Shift+F10 — for what can be done with it:
| On a layer | |
|---|---|
| Make current surface | Surveys only. Points placed on the working — a pickup, a boundary's corners, a planned hole's collar — take their levels from this survey, on this device. Until you choose, the newest survey is the current one, and its row says Current. |
| Edit outline | Designs only: move, add and remove the outline's points on the picture. |
| Hide / Draw | Stop drawing the layer, or draw it. It stays listed either way. |
| Colour and opacity… | Opens the colour and opacity under the row, inside the Explorer, so the picture stays in view. The picture changes as you choose; Apply keeps it on this device, Cancel puts it back. |
On a group row the menu offers Draw every one and Hide every one.
List or tree. Explorer as a tree on the Home tab draws the same workings and layers as a tree of folders, the way a file browser does; the row menus are the same. Explorer as icons folds it to a column with one button per kind of layer, each counting what is drawn, on a screen at least 62rem wide.
The picture
Plan view looks straight down, north up. Section looking north and Section looking east are vertical sections through the middle of the picture; Section line draws one anywhere. 3D view turns the same scene in three dimensions. Sections and 3D need a browser with WebGL; without it the workspace shows a flat plan you can read but not draw on.
| To | With a mouse | On a touch screen |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom | The wheel, about the pointer | Pinch |
| Pan | Middle-drag, or Space with a left-drag; a left-drag with no tool on in plan or section | One finger with no tool on, in plan or section; two fingers sliding |
| Turn | A left-drag in 3D; Shift with a left-drag from any view | One finger in 3D; two fingers twisting, or sliding up and down together to tilt |
| Select | A click; Ctrl with a drag selects inside a box | A tap; with Box select on, a drag |
| Act on what is under the pointer | Right-click | — |
Enter finishes a tool, Backspace takes back its last point, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y undo and redo, and Page Up and Page Down (or ] and [) step a section.
The status bar under the picture reads the grid position under the pointer, E … N … RL … m, and says what the pointer has snapped to — vertex, intersection, midpoint or on a line — or that it is off surface. Snap: on the status bar chooses which of those the pointer catches, or turns Snapping off. Surface: names the working's current surface and lists its surveys to choose another, or Use newest.
The picture's own menu. Right-click something in the picture for what can be done with it there: Edit blast on a saved blast, Blast this block on a block a blast can be laid in, Edit hole… and Remove hole on a hole of the blast you are designing, Remove connector on its tie-up, Change corners and Measure volume inside on a survey boundary, File as survey boundary, File as pickup string and Design a ramp along this on a digitised string, Design a round here on a heading, and Plan a hole here on open ground. What cannot be done is greyed, with the reason.
Surface and depth: seeing what is under the ground
In 3D a survey at 100% opacity is solid, so holes, solids and designs below the ground are hidden under it. Select the survey, press Colour in Properties (or Colour and opacity… on its row) and lower its Opacity to see through it. A design in a docked form follows the same rule as a saved one: a blast's holes, its tie-up and its outline below the ground are hidden under a solid survey, and seen through one you have made see-through. In plan the design is always drawn on top. See Seeing below the ground in 3D.
Properties
Select a layer and Properties says what it is: its name, its working, its figures, and for a blast its Status — Designed, Awaiting approval, Approved, Drilled, Charged, Fired or Reconciled. Under them are the layer's own actions: Fit to View, Colour, Open in a window, and whatever that kind of layer offers.
A bench blast, start to finish
Designing it
You need access level 4 to design a blast, by any of the ways in. Below it Design blast, New blast, Blast this block and Edit blast are greyed and say Designing a blast needs access level 4., and the Blasts register does not show its plus at all.
- Choose the working in the Explorer, and draw its newest survey.
- On the Blast tab, press Design blast — or right-click a block in the picture and choose Blast this block. The Design a blast form docks on the right, beside the picture. A block already selected is taken as the block.
- Under The block comes from, choose A bench of a pit design, A boundary I pick or draw or Corners I type. Add new boundary, at the top of the Boundary list, draws a new one on the picture as you design: see Drawing a new boundary as you design.
- Name it, set the day it is To fire on, and check the levels — Floor RL and Crest RL, or a Bench off the survey where the survey offers one — and the Ground the collars are read off.
- Under Burden from, choose how the burden is decided; set the Hole diameter (20 to 1000 mm), how The front row is laid and the Layout; and pick the Product, the Primer and the Detonator from the mine's Explosives list. The pattern is laid on the picture as you set it.
- Check The free face and The back line, then work on The holes on the picture: Add hole, Move hole, and right-click a hole for Edit hole… or Remove hole.
- Under Tie-up, choose how it runs and its firing points, then Tie the shot up.
- Read what the form found, under the tie-up — the holes laid and any warnings — then press Save draft. The blast is filed with the pit's blasts and opens on the blast screen.
The New blast command on the Blast tab opens the full blast screen in a window instead, with the same level needed. Everything on that screen is described in Drill and blast.
Seeing past the design
While the form is open, switches beside Show muckpile hide parts of the design so you can see what lies under them: Show holes, Show tie-up and Show outline. While the holes are hidden, the tools that click on a hole are off, and say The holes are hidden. Turn on Show holes to work on them on the picture. The switches change only what you see, and they are all on again the next time the form opens.
Once the shot is tied up, Show muckpile draws the heap it is predicted to leave; before that it says Tie the shot up first. With the heap shown, Muck opacity sets how see-through it is drawn, from 0% to 100%, starting at 55%. The picture changes as you slide; Apply keeps it on this device and Cancel puts it back.
Changing a saved blast
Select a saved blast in the Explorer, or right-click it in the picture, and choose Edit blast: the form docks again with the blast in it, and the picture shows your changes as you make them. Save keeps them. A blast awaiting approval, fired or reconciled cannot be edited, and Edit blast says why. While an approved blast's pattern is changed, the form asks Why the pattern changed and says Saving sends it back for approval — see Approving it.
Approving it
Select the blast. Properties shows its Approval: where it stands, and the actions open to you.
| Button | Who sees it | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Send for approval | Everyone, on a designed blast. It works at level 4 on a blast with holes; otherwise a line under it says Sending a blast for approval needs access level 4. or It has no holes to approve yet; draft the pattern in its window. | Sends it to the first stage of its group's approval chain. A group with no chain approves it at once, and the toast says so. |
| Approve | The approvers of the stage it waits on | Asks Approve this blast?, then signs that stage. The last stage approves the blast. |
| Send back | The same approvers | Asks for a reason, and returns it to the designer. |
| Withdraw | Whoever asked, or the account holder | Takes the request back; the approvals so far are dropped, and the pattern can be changed again. |
The pattern cannot change while it waits. An approved blast whose pattern is changed goes back for approval where its group has a chain: Why the pattern changed must be filled in before it saves, the blast returns to Designed with its sign-offs dropped, and is sent again from the first stage. With no chain it stays approved and the change is logged. Approvers are told when a blast reaches their stage. See From approval to the muckpile.
Charging and firing it
Open the blast in Properties opens it in a window over the workspace, where drilling, loads and the firing are recorded: Mark drilled, the loads each hole really took, Mark charged, and Record the firing. A load above what the hole holds, or more than a quarter over its design, asks Check this load before it is recorded. The day a blast is fired cannot be a day that has not come yet. See Drill and blast.
Looking back on it
A tied-up blast can show its muckpile in the picture after it is saved: select it and turn on Show muckpile in Properties. The heap it is predicted to leave is drawn in 3D, with its toe outline in plan, worked out the way the blast form works it out. 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 drawn. A blast that is not tied up has no muckpile to show, and Properties says so.
To watch the shot fire, open the blast and turn on Firing: see Watching it fire.
Hide every blast on the Blast tab takes every blast off the picture, in every working you have open, and Draw every blast puts them all back. To hide one working's blasts only, use Hide every one on its Blasts group in the Explorer.
Underground
- Design a round on the Blast tab, or Design a round here on a heading in the picture, docks the round designer: click the heading where the face stands, choose the Rock domain and the Explosive, and watch the holes go into the ground at the face. Save the round files it.
- A plan's Design rings on a stope docks the ring designer the same way, in the Professional view. Save the rings files them.
- Both need access level 4. Below it they say Designing a round needs level 4 on this working and Designing rings needs level 4 on this working.
- Select an underground blast and Properties offers Open in the round designer or Open in the ring designer, where it is sent for approval, approved or sent back, fired and retired, and Re-design on the pane, which docks it again. An approved round or set of rings that is changed asks Why it changed and goes back for approval.
See Underground drill and blast.
Keeping your workspace
The workspace remembers on this device what was up: the workings, the layers drawn and how, the view, the panes and the selection. Save my workspace on the Home tab keeps it on the server as well, so you can carry on from another device with Open saved workspace, which asks first because it replaces what is up. Forget saved workspace removes the saved one, after you confirm; this device keeps its own.