As an underground geologist, one of your job’s may be to create a long section puncture plot of the ore body drill-hole intercepts displaying the grade and true width.
This plot can then be used to help monitor the grades while mining, and to assist in the design of infill drilling programs to upgrade the resource-reserves.
In this first in a series of 4 posts on this topic, we outline the steps to create a Long Section Puncture Plot of the Mine Ore Zone displaying Hole ID, grade and true thickness.
Step 1
Create an intercept table in the database if this is not done already.
Database > Administration > Create Table
Step 2
A zone code now needs to be assigned to the database for the solid/dtm you want to composite.
Database > Analysis > Assign Multiple Domains.
In this scenario we used a default code of 0 for all the drill hole intercepts outside of the solid, and 100 for the drill hole intercepts inside the solid.
Step 3
The database now needs to be composited using zone=100 as a constraint.
Database > Composite > by Geological Constraints
Step 4
A string file will be produced with the following information in the Dfields. D1 has the composite assay field that we require.
Step 6
We now need to calculate the true width of the interval previously composited.
Database > extract > zone thickness and depth.
Tick the box for ‘use true thickness’, and enter in the dip and dip direction of the ore body.
Step 7
A string file will be produced with the following information in the Dfields. D2 contains the true thickness.