Mining Fronts

The ‘mining fronts’ approach, as shown in Figure 1 and 2, is a good way to refine results, control regions, and understand which are the best results considering different amounts extracted from a specific place. Using this methodology, you have the possibility to categorize masses by depth, a specific coordinate intervale, even into sectors based on into 360 degrees vision, of your project.

The general idea is pretty similar to what is used to define material types. The first step is to identify the area which you want to control. Then create an additional field regarding the mass on that region and assign it as a sum constraint while importing it. At last, go to the sum tab and control the minimum or maximum amount at the process or dump destinations.

Note that by using this feature you are able to control what, how much, and when the blocks should be mined according to what you want to analyze. This concept is also very useful in the context of mine design, although it increases the complexity while compared with the use of force/restrict mining surfaces, it can also guide solutions, geometrically speaking. It is important to remember that the sum constraint has a high priority parameter in the algorithm and it can also influence the other inputs based on the hierarchy order.