Maptek has announced that the latest version of its mine modelling and planning software, Vulcan, will include numerous improvements and new features.
Standout new features are Gantt Scheduler for underground operations, Level Designer for stope access design, and enhancements to Implicit Modelling. The new version also offers major upgrades to its Pit Optimiser, Borehole Geophysics, and stratigraphic modelling tools.
“We want to ensure customers spend less time processing data, leaving more time to apply their expertise to critical analysis and decision making,” said Vulcan Product Manager Eric Gonzalez. “For example, pit optimisations for both single and multi-pit designs are up to 95% faster in Vulcan 9.1. A calculation that may have taken four hours, now takes seconds.”
The Gantt Scheduler is straightforward to set up and run, with scheduling activities created directly from mine designs. Attributes can be generated on-the-fly, allowing schedules to be updated as designs are modified.
The Level Designer creates hundreds of crosscuts in seconds. Design strings and cost information are provided for each development scenario, allowing engineers to determine an optimal plan for stope access.
New Implicit Modelling options in Vulcan 9.1 include sample selection tools and triangulation output controls. More complex settings can be modelled into domains, including on the fly combinations of geological database codes.
New predefined pit-by-pit graphs or period-by-period charts in Pit Optimiser reduce the amount of customisation required in Excel. Users do not need to regularise and manipulate models, or import/export data for processing. Improved analysis and viewing tools allow more ‘what if’ scenarios to be run in the same timeframe. The result is a superior pit design.
Stratigraphic modelling upgrades allow users to combine different modelling methods into a ‘hybrid’ approach which makes best use of their available data. A new interface to borehole geophysics streamlines database interpretation.
CAD data is now handled by graphics card drivers for improved performance, building on support for triangulations and block models introduced in earlier releases.
‘Vulcan 9.1 follows the Maptek philosophy to provide powerful tools that help make geologists, engineers and other mining professionals as efficient as possible,’ said Gonzalez.
‘The new functionality in this release rounds out the Vulcan underground planning cycle from drillhole manipulation, through implicit geological modelling, resource estimation, stope optimisation and strategic mine design, to detailed resource based scheduling. Engineers can feel they have really done their due diligence’, he concluded.
Vulcan 9.1 is in the final stages of beta testing. Release to customers is scheduled from mid-November. For more information, visit Maptek.
