The Maptek Vulcan Advanced
Reserves Editor reports the contents of a Vulcan block model within a specific
triangulation region or other criteria. The Advanced Reserves Editor gives the user more
flexibility than General Reserves (Block > Reserves > General) and can
export the results in the familiar and user-friendly, comma seperated values
(csv) format. The following is an
introduction to the Advanced Reserves Editor.
Advanced Reserves saves a
specification file (extension .res) with all the user specified, panel settings. This specification file is stored by default
in the current working directory, however, this file can be saved in a remote location by browsing to the
desired folder. The Advanced Reserves
Editor has five useful areas (Don’t bother with the reporting section Manipulating the results in Microsoft Excel is much more useful.)
The Design tab of the
Advanced Reserves Editor panel allows the user to create or select a
specification file and to select a block model file. If the specification file entered does not
exist, a new one will be created.
Under the Variables section, the most important subsection is Grade Variables. This subsection specifies the block model
variables to be reported, as well as the density to be used. If both the density field and default density field
are specified, the default value will be used for block model blocks that
contain the default value for that variable, block model blocks do not have ‘missing’
values.
All other variable fields
must have a 'type' field set. Grade
variables should be specified as a weight type (usually wt by mass), tonnage or
dollar variables should have a sum type.
Either ‘Use Average’ or ‘Default for Missing’ should be set for each
variable. Generally, the ‘Default for
Missing’ should be set to ‘0.’ Again,
this is for those values which contain the variable default. No block model variables have ‘missing’
values. Don’t check the ‘Report Range’
checkbox. It is so simple to get the range of values in Microsoft Excel that this checkbox is superfluous.
The remaining subsections under Variables (Breakdown Fields,
Product Codes and Grade Cutoffs) break down the block model data by different
criteria. This is not a basic function
and will be addressed later. I will say
that, if you have entered information in all three of those subcategories, you
have probably done something wrong. Keep it simple until you have been through the panels several times.
In the Regions section you are defining the three
dimensional space used for calculating reserves. The Polygons and Centrelines sections both
create triangulations on the fly based on specified CAD data. You can also create and define your
own triangulations. These can be
selected from the screen or by browsing to the appropriate folder.
The default setting in Block Selection is to ‘Select all blocks’
and ‘proportional cell evaluation.’ The
option to ‘Select all blocks’ can be changed by using the block selection
panel. This is advanced functionality
and will be addressed later. If
triangulations have been defined, there is usually no reason to use any other
setting.
‘Proportional cell evaluation’ refers to how much of the
block model block should be used, based on how it intersects with the
triangulation region. Blocks that fall
completely inside or outside the triangulation are not affected by this setting
but the blocks that intersect the boundary are.
With this default setting the proportion of the block model block that
falls within the triangulation boundary will be counted toward the reserves
total, the proportion that falls outside will not be counted. The other alternative is called ‘Full cell
evaluation.’ Using ‘Full cell evaluation,’
any block whose centroid falls within the triangulation boundary will count
completely toward the reserves total. Any
block whose centroid falls outside the triangulation will not be counted at
all. Both ‘Select all blocks’ and ‘Proportional
cell evaluation’ are the default settings because you want to use them in almost all scenarios.
In the Save and Run tab you will want to click the ‘Save’
button. If this specification file
already exists the ‘Confirm’ panel will pop up.
Unless you want to save these settings as another file, go ahead and
select ‘Replace.’ Next, you will want to
check the box to ‘Output CSV file.’ I
don’t know why this is not checked by default but if you want to use the file
with Microsoft Excel you will want to check this box. Finally, select the ‘Calculate’ button. The calculation will spawn in a t-shell in a separate
window. Open the results in Excel and
manipulate as desired.
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