Datamine Australia is stepping up the marketing effort around its new mine planning and scheduling software package following the successful launch of the product in Canada and South Africa.

Developed by South African-based consulting firm African Computer Mining Services (which established an Australian subsidiary Australian Computer Mining Services in the latter part of last year) and Datamine software publishing arm Earthworks, the new version of Mine2-4D is said to offer leading-edge integration of scheduling and 3D mine modelling capabilities, a higher level of automation than the previous version of Mine2-4D and other programs on the market, and advanced visualisation and reporting tools.

The bottom line, according to the Perth-based manager of ACMS Dylan Webb, is a significant shift in mine planning and management speed producing efficiency and cost benefits.

“Mine2-4D is not a black box that replaces the engineer,” he said. “It gives the engineer more time to do the job he’s there to do.”

Webb said the software had been written by mining consulting people who were users of mining software. Revamped features of Mine2-4D, and in particular the automation and connection of 3D modelling and scheduling functions, had been two years in the making.

“Mine2-4D automatically prepares the design into scheduling components, sequences the activities and interrogates them against the geological block model,” he said.

“The results are automatically combined, formatted and inserted into the schedule, including derived activities such as long-hole drilling and backfill. This eliminates the need for data collection, reducing errors associated with manual handling.

“If the block model changes the information in the schedule automatically changes.

“Mine2-4D has maximised the use of automated processes to eliminate many repetitive tasks normally associated with mine planning.”

Sequencing via manual linking of dependencies between various activities was one example, Webb said. Mine2-4D automatically created dependencies, reducing the repetitive nature of mine sequencing. As the mine sequencing process precedes the creation of links between a mine plan and mine schedule, automation of the process helps an engineer focus on frequent, rapid mine plan adjustments.

Dependencies can also be defined and modified by the user, and user defined attributes can be applied to string data to create wall objects that can be sequenced. The links are created graphically and the user can test the sequence with animations.

“Mine2-4D is adept at managing the constantly changing mining environment,” Webb said. “It manages the change while allowing the user to attend to the mine’s engineering requirements, these being to plan and forecast, communicate and collaborate the plan, and reconcile the plan.

“What Mine2-4D does is make the engineering department the consumer of all the information in the mine. The engineer doesn’t have to ask the geologists for tonnes and grade by level and then place the information into an Excel spreadsheet. Mine2-4D stores the information in a block model that it interrogates to get the tonnes and grade and this information is automatically integrated with the schedule.

“One of the main benefits is that Mine2-4D allows the operation to literally see where it is going — to assess how short-term gains are impacting on the long term, and to assess how different mining scenarios impact on the operation.

“What is even better is that the numbers and results can be generated in a very short time.”

Said to be used currently for openpit and underground mine design, Mine2-4D is essentially a planning and scheduling package for underground metalliferous mines. It can also be used in underground coal mine planning and scheduling. Australia’s Mining Monthly understands an openpit mine planning version is currently under development.

Mine2-4D can extract mine design data from Autocad, Datamine, Earthworks, Metech, Vulcan, Gemcom, Surpac and other software programs, and can also import geological information from the major mining software packages. Once data is imported, the Mine2-4D system “remembers” how the data was imported and from where it was imported, according to Datamine. If the source data is altered in any way, Mine2-4D can “refresh” without manual re-importing.

Datamine Australia general manager Sara Porter said Mine2-4D was currently in use at more than 20 sites, including more than a dozen mine sites. The latter were mainly Canadian and South African mines, though reaction to the launch of the product in Australia had been favourable, she said.