Zambian Mining News The Premium Source of Information on The Zambian Mining Industry
Related Articles
The upcoming release of Micromine 2014
Leading provider of software solutions and services to the global exploration and mining community, MICROMINE, provides mine operations with the technology required to drive productivity and cost efficiencies throughout the mining process.
Founded in 1986, MICROMINE has spent the past 28 years introducing and further developing software solutions specific to the needs of exploration and mining companies worldwide. MICROMINE’s suite of software solutions cover the entire mining process, from geological exploration through to mine design and mine production. This unique offering allows clients to purchase all of their software from the one vendor.
MICROMINE is currently preparing for the launch of Micromine 2014, the latest version of the company’s namesake exploration and mine design solution, Micromine. The application is due for release mid-2014.
Micromine is a modular solution which allows the capture, management and interpretation of critical exploration and mining data. Micromine provides explorers an in-depth understand of a project so prospective regions can be targeted more accurately. Miners are provided easy-to-use modelling, estimation and design tools to simplify day-to-day design and production tasks.
Micromine is renowned for its user-friendly and intuitive nature. Because of Micromine’s logical simplicity users can easily become proficient in the application andcomplete tasks quickly, increasing efficiencies.
Micromine Product Manager, Daria Lvova, explains “Consistent with all MICROMINE releases, Micromine 2014 focuses on intuitive usability with enhanced workflow methodologies and logical processes. Significantly, Micromine 2014 closely follows the release of Micromine 2013, and includes many enhancements and new functionalities associated with the application’s mine design capabilities”.
“Micromine is already a leader in the field within this area. The solution contains one of the only true-implicit modellers. Released in Micromine 2013, Micromine’s Implicit Modelling module uses industry-standard radial basis (RBFs) to model grade shells, lithology boundaries, faults and surfaces. Wireframes extracted from the implicit model are readily displayed in Vizex, Micromine’s 3D environment, and are a valuable tool for finalising geological interpretations. Micromine offers simple methods for adding control points (such as drillhole intersections) to create a more accurate fault model. It also provides support for trend information to produce models that better reflect the project area.
Micromine 2014 contains a variety of new user benefits and improved, intuitive functionality associated with exploration, capability and performance, and mining. The application’s new features have been designed to further improve operational efficiencies and ease-of-use, and are highly relevant to both exploration and mining companies”.
“I am confident that MICROMINE 2014 will be well-received by the international mining community. MICROMINE invests a significant percentage of annual revenue into research and development to ensure that our software solutions are constantly evolving and continue to exceed clients’ expectations”, Lvova concludes
One area of development that is currently an area of focus is the integration between Micromine’s mine design tools and the HPGPS Machine Guidance System. Mine designs produced in Micromine, including blast projects, will be published directly out of the mine design package into the Pitram machine guidance system. Pitram is MICROMINE’s leading mine operations system. The integration will be two-way so actual as-completed project data will arrive directly to the mine design package as soon as the work is finished. This innovation will transfer live project progress information back to the mine engineer’s desktop.
NEW FEATURES IN MICROMINE 2014
64-bit application
The largest single change is the conversion of Micromine to a full 64-bit application, building on the hybrid 32/64-bit framework of our last few releases and allowing our clients to work with larger data than ever before. Micromine was already good at optimising memory and we are excited to see what our 64-bit release can achieve. Many underlying systems such as wireframes and drillhole databases have also been updated as part of this change.
CAD enhancements
Our engineering and design clients gain a number of major CAD enhancements including new snap modes, the ability to mirror strings, and a dynamic input mode that allows them to enter specific numbers (such as a gradient or distance) in the middle of a graphical editing session. We’ve also extensively enhanced our pit design tools with new road and switchback options, along with some brand new road design tools.
Graphic and statistics
We’ve completely rewritten many of our graphing and statistical functions, giving them much better graphics and more interactivity. The changes are so extensive that they are effectively new features. Along with these we’ve added brand new features like box-and-whisker plots and a new statistical summary. We looked at clients’ statistical workflows and ensured that users can easily produce what they need with minimal effort. Although everyone will benefit from this improved workflow, it is especially important for exploration and resource geologists who use statistics on a daily basis. Our Steronet display has undergone a similar rewrite to make it much more visual and capable, along with adding a number of analysis options for poles and planes. These new features are only the beginning; we plan to release more stats and graph updates in future versions.
Graphic and statistics
Geologists benefit from two new Vizex (Visual Explorer) fence diagram options: a 3D fence section, which produces a traditional fence section using segments that may be drawn anywhere within the display, and a drillhole fence, with segments that snap to drillhole collars. All holes in a drillhole fence display are drawn vertically, making it ideal for seam correlation. For cartographic presentation we’ve enhanced our fill (hatch) patterns by adding support for rotation and automatic alignment to the drillhole orientation, along with adding enhanced scaling options to our points display.
