Tools

Tools applicable to surface drill/blast design are available on the Mining | Surface Drill/Blast Design tab:

Layer

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Layer group, you can do the following:

• Click New to create and display a blast design.

• Click Open to browse the blasthole databases in the current project or another location.

• Click Edit Form to open the form for the selected layer.

• Click Blast Design Manager to browse the blasthole databases in the current project or another location.

Blast Polygon

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Blast Polygon group, you can do the following:

• Click Select or Digitise to import selected or digitised polygon/s.

• Click Select or Digitise | Import File to import blast polygons from a file used to restrict the blast design.

Hole Type

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Hole Type group, you can do the following:

• Click Edit Hole Types to create new hole types or edit existing hole types and their properties.

  

Drillhole Pattern

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Drillhole Pattern group, you can do the following:

• Click Rectangular Pattern to create a blasthole pattern within the bounds of a polygon, for example a dig block polygon or blast master.

  

• Click Pattern by Polygon to create blastholes in a specified pattern. In the Create Blast Pattern form, you can specify the boundary of the pattern area, the row direction, and the spacing and the burden of the holes within it.

• Click Add Row to add a new row to a blast block. Hole, location and charge parameters can be specified beforehand in an Row Properties form.

• Click Extend Row to add new holes to an existing row by snapping to a point on that row. Hole, location and charge parameters can be specified beforehand in an Extend Row form.

• Click Merge Rows to merge rows by snapping from the end of one row to the start of another row or vice versa.

  

• Select Merge Rows | Auto Merge Rows to select the rows to merge from and then select the rows to merge to, before the corresponding rows in each selection group are merged.

  

• Select Merge Rows | Break Row to snap to the point on a row where you want to break the row.

  

• Select Merge Rows | Merge Blocks to merge one or more blocks with an entry block.

  

• Select Merge Rows | Split Block to split a block into two blocks. Holes are split across the blocks appropriately.

  

• Click Insert Hole to insert or append a hole to an existing row. Hole, location and charge parameters can be specified beforehand in an Insert Hole form.

• Click Delete Holes to delete selected holes or delete the holes in selected (block or row) objects.

Modify

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Modify group, you can do the following:

• Click Copy/Move (or use the option on the right-click menu) to copy or move the selected blasthole/row by a specified distance.

• Click Clip to clip blasthole lengths to a reference wireframe.

• Click Extend to extend blasthole lengths to a reference wireframe.

• Select Adjust | Adjust to Wireframe to extend or clip blastholes using a reference wireframe.

  

• Select Adjust | Adjust to Elevation to extend or clip the length of selected holes to a specified elevation or a fixed depth.

  

• Select Adjust | Adjust to Topo to drape blastholes onto a surface that lies above or below the collars of the holes, in the current plane of the view.

  

• Select Adjust | Adjust to Length to round the lengths of selected blastholes according to a final length value.

  

• Click Show Table to toggle the display of the Blastholes table for the selected or active block.

  

• Click Edit Pattern Extents to edit the extents for a selected pattern in order to reposition it within the design.

  

• Click Delete to delete selected (block or row) objects and their holes (if any).

View

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the View group you can do the following:

• Use the Active Block drop-down menu to select a block as the active block.

• Use the Inactive Blocks drop-down menu to choose how inactive blast design blocks are shown in the active layer.

  

Filter

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Filter group you can do the following:

• Use the Filter drop down to select a configured filter for the blast design view in Vizex.

• Click Filter Setup to create and configure Simple and Expression based filters to use with the blast design in Vizex.

Report

On the Mining | Blast Design tab, in the Report group, you can do the following:

• Click Plot Options to choose which details to include in a plot. Drilling, sub-drilling, and explosive summary totals, may be included or excluded from the plot.

  

• Click Generate Plot to generate a Blast Design Plot.

  

• Click Summary Report to generate a report. Database, Block Summary and Consumables report options are available for selection.

  

• Click Distance to Free Face to check that the designed holes adhere to a specified minimum distance to the free face. If necessary the collar position, inclination and orientation of a hole can then be edited interactively. An annotation of the current distance to the free face is shown.

  

Import/Export

• Click Import Data to import data (as new blocks) into the database and set the necessary blasthole attributes.

• Click Import from IREDES to import blasthole data from files in IREDES International Rock Excavation Data Exchange Standard is an industry standard for data exchange between mining equipment and office computer systems. (*.xml) format.

• Click Export to IREDES to export blasthole data in file in IREDES format. The option to export to CSV file format is also provided.

• Click Export to Drillhole Database to export a blast design to a drillhole database.

Charging

On the Mining | Blast Design > Charging tab, you can do the following:

• Click Consumables Library to inspect and configure the consumables that have been assigned to the current design.

  

• Click Edit Charge Templates to edit the charge templates that can be assigned to drillholes.

• Click Assign Charge Templates to assign a charge template to selected drillholes.

• Click Charge Calculations to calculate the explosive lengths required for a series of holes. The purpose of this function is to calculate the length of explosive for each hole and then write this information to an Interval file in the database.

• Click Blast Displacement.

The Blast Displacement tool provides a visual representation of the potential displacement of ore blocks resulting from a blast. This information can be used with drill pattern and shot orientation data to help minimise ore displacement and dilution during future blasting.

Firing Sequence

• Click Firing Sequence Options to set up the surface connectors and charge templates to be applied to a firing sequence.

• Click Firing Sequence to use the mouse to interactively define one or more firing sequence lines.

Play / Animate

On the Charging tab, in the Play and Animate groups:

• Use the Playback buttons or the Slider control to move backwards or forwards one step at a time. The animation speed can be controlled by entering a value in milliseconds per second. A negative value can also be entered to rewind the animation. Alternatively, a time (duration) for the animation can be set.