Underground Mine Design

On the Mining tab, in the Mine Design group: Select Underground Design to load underground mine design strings in Vizex.

(If an underground design is already open in Vizex, on the Mining | Underground Design tab, in the Create group, click New/Open.)

The design of underground drives, rises and shafts, declines or inclines, can be undertaken at any gradient, measured by ratio, by angle, or by percentage.

On the Design tab, in the Editing group, you can use the Curve Properties tool to digitise curves quickly and easily at a radius suitable for the equipment being used at a particular mine.

A drive can be designed by creating the Centreline String and then creating the walls using one of several methods:

  • Generate Sidewalls tool: Generate a polygon enclosing the area within a specified distance of the selected string.

  • Sidewall to Solid: Generate a solid from one or more polygonal (sidewall) shapes.

  • Sidewall to Centreline: Generate a centreline from a file containing the output from the Sidewall to Solid function.

  • Floor Wireframe: Use this form-based function to generate a declined or multi-level surface wireframe from the strings or points in an Input file.

  • Interactive Centreline to Solid: Apply a profile to a centre line and "extrude" a decline design.

  • Interactive Generate Profile Shape: Generate a profile shape at a specified point.

  • Create Floor Wireframe: Generate a declined or multi-level surface wireframe from strings or points displayed in Vizex.

  • On the Mining tab, in the Production group, you can use Ring Design tools to edit and display underground blasthole layouts. Designs suitable for any stoping method can be generated, taking into account the characteristics of the area being excavated, and the physical limitations of drill rigs.

  • To aid visualisation, wireframes can be generated from design strings, which can then be used to Calculate volumes, or to extract sections which can be used as inputs to Ring Design and Blast Design.

Refer to the “Wireframe Volumes” function in the Wireframe section of the online help for more information.

Once a solid has been created, Polygon Boolean and Wireframe Boolean functions can be used to further refine your designs and volume calculations.

Underground mine design is also supported by the Stope Optimiser function.