Manual Block Creation and Adjustments

This exercise describes the manual creation of mining block outlines and solid wireframes by cutting the bench solids with manually-defined cutter strings.

Cutter strings can be defined within the task or imported from an external file. Any strings generated as part of the automatic block generation task can also be reviewed with this panel.

Prerequisites

You have completed Automatically Create Blocks

Exercise: Reviewing the generated blocks

In this example, you are going to review the automatically-generated blocks from the previous exercise.

Using the Reserves ribbon, select Mining Blocks | Manual. This displays the Manually Create Mining Blocks task. If you are asked to save the previously open task, click Yes.
Make sure that no bench data clipping is active by checking the Bench Clipping toolbar and disabling the Clip Using Benches option if it is selected (it is selected in the image below):
By default, the outline strings representing phase 1 are enabled. You should see something similar to the following (enable a plan view if required):

Each of the outline strings are labelled with their corresponding BLOCKID value.
The Mining Blocks table shows, for each defined bench, whether the phase has been cut to achieve the mining rate and density target set for it as part of the Automatically Create Mining Blocks task.

Select (left-click) any cell in the first row of the Mining Blocks table.
This highlights the strings representing the generated blocks for the upper bench (2180 elevation):
Select the [2170] elevation bench - the screen updates automatically to show the outline strings for blocks to be mined from this bench:

Note how the blocks are not contiguous at this level.
Review bench 2160:

Exercise: Using a custom cutter string to manually create blocks

In this exercise, you will modify automatically-generated blocks for the 2160m bench, using a manually digitized cutter string, in order to create more practical mining shapes for that bench.

Select elevation [2160] in the table.
In this case, you're going to subdivide blocks 101011002 and 101011003 by inserting a new cutter string. The blocks, whilst they match the parameters specified during auto block creation, would benefit from being sliced down into more practical, smaller shapes.

Click New String and, in the Task window, digitize a string to split these blocks as shown (click Done after digitizing the final point):
To apply this new cutter string to the selected bench, click Generate.

This subdivides any block within the selected bench using all defined cutter strings. In this case, two of the blocks are split into four:

New block ID numbers are assigned automatically.
The upper benches, for mining in the relatively near future, are subdivided more than those further down the list. This is expected as the specified Timeframe describes blocks representing a shorter time period than later in the schedule (if you recall the timeframe values, the first 2 months of mining were split into blocks, each of which represents a week's mined volume. As the timeframe progresses, the time periods become less granular, i.e.:

You can see this by selecting bench level 2150 which shows blocks cut to represent a more strategic time period (in this case, years):
Benches 2140 to 2050 are not subdivided by the automatic block process at all. This is because the benches can be mined in a year or less, so each bench is represented in full as a single block.

Click through benches 2140 to 2050 to see this in effect.
Select Bench 2110 and digitize a new cutter string to subdivide it (roughly equally) as shown:
Make sure that both strings extend beyond the boundary of the 2140, 2130, 2120 and 2110 benches - if you're unsure, digitize outside the hull of all existing closed strings.
Once digitized, you will see a "Yes" description appear next to bench 2110 in the Mining Blocks table - this indicates that a cutter string is available for that bench (either manually or automatically generated):
For this example, you are going to use this same string to split benches 2100, 2090 and 2080. To do this, select row 2100 (any cell) and click Copy from Above. Do the same for benches 2090 and 2080 - these will now also show a "Yes" in their respective Cutters column:
Click Generate All.
To see the impact of these changes more clearly, use the Bench Clipping toolbar to activate the Clip using benches option (you disabled this at the start of this exercise):

Using the toolbar, set the Above option to "0" and the Below option to "1". This will show, for the target bench (crest) elevation, the full bench immediately below it:
Click Bench 2110, 2100, 2090 and 2080 table rows in succession. You will see a filtered view of each bench (and an indication of the "1" below), similar to this:

Note how identical copies of the 2110m cutter string has been used on the 3 following benches to subdivide blocks.
Save and Close your task.

In the next exercise, you will evaluate the generated blocks against the specified model and generate a reserves table.