Automatic Haul Road Reconciliation in K-MINE

Welcome! In this video, we’ll show you a powerful new improvement that saves even more time and provides greater flexibility in open pit design. It focuses on one of the most challenging parts of the process: building haul roads.

Let’s go through the workflow step by step.

First, as usual, we generate contours from the benches and the wireframe. We then quickly clean up the lines and prepare them for accurate construction by removing open contours and deleting any contours that enclose areas too small for mining.

Next, we select only the unique contours and assign them to the correct benches with a single click.

Each contour can still be refined individually when necessary, while the basic editing commands remain available at every stage of the workflow.

Now let’s move on to haul road design.

We’ll start with two roads that need to connect at a specific bench. When necessary, you can manually stop a road from continuing at any point.

Next, we’ll add a third road and position a switchback wherever the design requires it. This is where the new updates begin.

We’ve added the ability to define the length of the smoothing section after a switchback.

This helps you fit a switchback into different pit conditions and create a smoother, more accurate connection with other pit elements. The required length can be set directly in the ramps table.

Next, we’ll add another road that starts on the same bench as the switchback, creating intersections between the two roads.

We then run the road reconciliation command. The algorithm automatically detects the exact intersection points and positions switchbacks as close to them as possible.

When the switchback exits overlap slightly, you only need to adjust the road’s starting point without changing the ramp parameters.

This is how the new automatic road reconciliation feature works.

It helps create accurate connections between intersecting haul roads while reducing the need for manual adjustments.

The next update helps you maintain full control over the design process.

We’ve added undo and redo functionality together with an auto-recalculation toggle. You can now easily return to an earlier construction stage or repeat your latest actions whenever necessary.

The module also stores the settings exactly as they were at the time of each calculation, making the workflow even more convenient.

Finally, we’ve added another road reconciliation option that can eliminate the need for manual adjustment in additional design scenarios.

The Connection command can now join a switchback on one bench to the start of another road.

You can enable this option with a checkbox wherever it is needed: either at the start of the new road or on a ramp that ends on the same bench as that road.

This supports more road design scenarios and helps save both time and effort.

As you can see, creating an open pit design in K-MINE continues to become easier.

Try the new tools and send us your feedback.