Final Pit Contour Design (LoM) for Optimal Resource Estimation

Final Pit Contour Design for Reliable Resource Estimation

Today we’re taking a detailed look at designing the final pit contour and aligning it precisely with the optimal reference shell. Accurate design of pit contours is essential in the mining industry, especially under today’s economic pressures, where minimizing operational costs and maximizing resource recovery are critical.

Selecting the Optimal Final Pit Contour

To begin, we need to select a final pit contour for our pit design. For this example, we’ll choose the contour corresponding to a product price adjustment factor of 0.75. This particular contour will guide our shell creation, ensuring economic efficiency and operational practicality.

Generating and Refining Isolines

Next, we generate isolines referencing the established mining horizons. Currently, the “Create isolines” command accomplishes this. An exciting update is coming soon: this task will be automated within the dynamic design plugin, significantly enhancing workflow efficiency.

During this stage, we remove open-ended lines and smooth isolines to maintain only those clearly relevant to our design. Automatic smoothing capabilities are also under active development, which will further streamline this process. Typically, narrow areas within the pit aren’t significant for detailed design and can be excluded.

Dynamic Design and Horizon Adjustment

Switching to the dynamic design plugin, we define our horizons and add essential guiding lines. This tool allows extensive flexibility—supporting lines can be added across multiple horizons or within the same horizon, tailored precisely to the current pit geometry.

Verify slope angles thoroughly to ensure alignment with target geotechnical parameters. Adjustments are straightforward: simply modify horizon settings as needed. Additionally, the dynamic design plugin lets you assign specific geotechnical parameters to distinct zones within the pit, accommodating varied geological conditions effectively.

Designing Efficient and Cost-Effective Ramps

Ramp design is a critical phase, combining technical precision with creative insight. Efficient road placement connects key pit areas while minimizing ramp length, significantly reducing operational costs. Our dynamic design plugin provides unmatched flexibility in configuring curves, horizontal segments, and detailed road structures.

Every design adjustment automatically updates all related elements, ensuring consistent accuracy. A significant advantage is the seamless integration across various software modules, enabled by our unified environment and shared database.

Preliminary Volume and Quality Estimations

Once your pit design meets your criteria, quickly perform preliminary volume and quality estimations directly within the dynamic design plugin. Results can be segmented by zones or horizons, offering clear visualization and ensuring all critical blocks from the block model are included in your assessment.

Evaluating the Final Pit Contour

The finalized pit contour shell is now ready for further analysis. In the “Optimal Pit Boundaries” module, navigate to the “External Contour Evaluation” section to incorporate your designed contour as an additional constraint.

Using the comparison feature, analyze multiple scenarios simultaneously. Detailed evaluations resemble optimization outputs, providing comprehensive insights and enabling informed decision-making. Indicators in tables simplify comparative analysis, but you can calculate additional custom metrics as needed.

Explore freely—generate multiple variants, refine comparisons, and identify your optimal solution quickly and efficiently. With the flexibility and robustness of dynamic design tools and integrated optimization modules, achieving reliable and economically sound final pit contours has never been easier.

Experiment with confidence, and achieve exceptional results!