IM 2017 April | Page 34

CANADIAN TECHNOLOGY the assessment was to determine if DRX could improve the conversion efficiency of a volume of ground from the Indicated to the Measured category Of particular interest to the company was DRX’s capability of producing a number of drilling plans based on varying budgets. Each of the drilling plans had to meet all project constraints while maximizing the indicated to measured conversion rates. Creating a number of valid options enabled the company to select the appropriate plan that best aligned with its strategic goals and budgets. When compared to the manual layout, the DRX solutions provide a means of drastically improving conversion rates. This increase in resource conversion efficiency has the potential to save money but more importantly it saves time, both in drilling and setup. The DRX-3 solution not only decreases the total number of drill holes, but also improves drilling times. Deployed as a Microsoft Excel add-in, ThreeDify Excel CoreBlock (XLCoreBlock) is a Microsoft Excel based drill hole visualiser and quick resource estimator. The company says that “by leveraging the popularity and ease-of- use of Microsoft Excel, XLCoreBlock has significantly lowered the learning curve and total cost of ownership for mining knowledge workers. It has become the go-to tool for field geologists, mining executives, investment banks and property owners. “XLCoreBlock provides mining professionals with a quick, easy and cost-effective way to visualise, validate and analyse drill hole data in 3D directly within Microsoft Excel.” The CoreViz Module allows its users to visualise and validate assays, lithology and attributes (both continuous and categorical), making XLCoreBlock a potent Excel-based QA/QC DDH validation tool. The BlockModel Module features implicit modelling based on a very fast implementation of anisotropic Radial Basis Function (RBF) interpolation. It allows the user to quickly create and export 3D block models and iso-grade surfaces or solids. The RBF interpolator is a global, automatic resource estimator with no need for tedious variogram modelling. XLCoreBlock Key Benefits n Easy-to-use: visualise and analyse your drill hole data in 3D, and conduct quick resource estimation within your familiar Microsoft Excel interface n Automatic: automated interpolation of block model grades and attributes for both single and multi-mineral deposits using 3D anisotropic RBF interpolators that