New and Enhanced Maptek Vulcan 8.1

Mining technology developer Maptek has released Vulcan 8.1, providing new engineering functionality for underground slope studies, scheduling tools for open-pit operations, and a host of enhancements to existing features. The release includes new bundles: complete packages with standalone feature sets aimed at particular applications, as well as new modules to plug into existing Vulcan licences. Performance improvements, interface redesign and other enhancements complete the release.

The scheduling bundles are aimed at open cut operations and can be purchased with or without Optimisation. The Short Term Planner enables users to create open pit short term mine plans with minimum manual design. It combines a new Sequence Accumulation tool with interactive scheduling tools already in Vulcan. Both of these packages are designed to introduce speed into the scheduling process.

Improvements have been made to the Chronos scheduler continue from those delivered in Vulcan 8.0. New configuration parameters and multi-threading can help reduce the time to run optimisations.

The Vulcan Stope Optimiser determines mineable shapes, especially in underground operations, to be applied to open-cut or near-surface deposits. The optimiser is developed to speed up the running of multiple scenarios based on variables in block models. Output includes 3D mining zones, polygons and reports.

A new QarryModeller bundle provides a set of modelling tools tailored for quarries. A new toolbar streamlines the Grade Control process. Users can now load blast designs on the screen and change the display options through the toolbar.

Enhancements to user interfaces have been delivered in the pit layout and bench & batter projection menus. New geotechnical display options include enhanced tadpole plots and stickplots, as well as the ability to combine them in more understandable features.

The connection time to the databases has been improved and users can avoid connecting to the remote database if they just want to view drillholes.

In a common-grade estimation run length compositing task, users can achieve more accurate compositing, by distributing the ‘missing' information across previous run length intervals or choosing whether to measure it with the last interval given a certain tolerance.

Data exported from Vulcan 8.1 can be displayed using free viewers and embedded into document and presentations using Ngrain and VRML formats. Vulcan 8.1 provides support for ECW image import, a commonly requested aerial image format.

Near-future projects include a new data access layer for interoperability across all Maptek products along with new geological and engineering tools.