Micromine 2020 Ring Design is scheduled for release in November, and the company said engineers will be able to put its planning tools to work to realise unprecedented levels of control during their design.

"The new ring design function is fully integrated into MICROMINE's market leading exploration and 3-D mine design software solution, which is used by more than 1,500 customers worldwide," MICROMINE said of the software.

Product analyst Andrew Esmaili added that the new features were added in response to client requests; it sought to address their day-to-day challenges with the improved design and visualisation tools.

"We all know that ring drilling typically occurs in confined spaces, so it's vital for design engineers to have an awareness geometry, mining conditions and drilling equipment. However, the reality is that modern engineers spend more time behind computers and less time in underground workings," he explained.

"This is where our new tools come in."

He added that, more specifically, the ring design tool allows a planner to define the size and shape of rig(s) a mine uses. Once determined, the planner can utilise a new utility "to apply constraints that ensure that boom's range and coverage limits are not inadvertently exceeded during the design process.''

With Micromine 2020, engineers are able to also easily create, view, edit, mirror, copy or replicate rings. As new survey data is available, dedicated tools simplify updating the designs.

"Ring designs load in seconds, not minutes, allowing easy manipulation and updating," according to the company. "Users can also generate detailed plots of ring designs with comprehensive customisation options such as adding annotations, summary tables, legends and graphs, just to name a few."

It has the ability, too, to turn raw mining data into a meaningful 3-D design. It accepts centrelines and wireframe for underground production drives, and ring boundaries can be defined by hand using templates or via auto-generation using wireframes.

Finally, the release features integrated tools for modelling, estimation, design, optimisation and scheduling, with data sets all saved and easily accessible within the Micromine product. It will additionally include a new stope optimiser, improved scheduler and updated implicit modelling and pit optimiser modules.