The future of mining operation workflows with Seequent

Overview

Video Transcript

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(upbeat music)

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<v Peter>Welcome everyone, and thanks for joining us here</v>

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at PDAC 2021.

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I hope that you’re having a good conference

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and making lots of good connections.

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My name is Peter Oshust,

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I am a senior project geologist with Seequent

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based in Vancouver.

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I will be your moderator for this presentation

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of the future of mining operations workflows at Seequent.

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And it is also my pleasure to introduce our speaker,

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Ryan Lee.

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Ryan is the product manager for production geology

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and mining operations

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on the Seequent production management team.

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He holds a master of science in geology

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from the University of Waikato at Hamilton, New Zealand.

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Ryan began his professional career working

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on mineral exploration projects in New Zealand

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before joining Seequent in Christchurch

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to become a software developer.

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He is an expert user in Leapfrog Geo and Seequent Central.

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And has contributed to the development

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of many key features across both products.

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And with that, I welcome Ryan.

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The floor is yours.

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<v Ryan>Thanks Peter.</v>

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So today I’m going to be talking to you about

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what Seequent is doing to better support you

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in your mine operations.

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And I’ll be covering many of the new exciting features

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that are coming up.

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So before we get started, I just want to point out

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that this presentation is about the future.

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And so we are making some forward looking statements

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and what you see here today may change.

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So, Seequent has a range of solutions across

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the mining value chain,

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spanning from discovery

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through to recovery of the resource

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and through to restoration.

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And we’re working to create an interconnected ecosystem

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of solutions between all our products.

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In the mining operation space,

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we have Leapfrog Geo

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or as market leader in geological modeling,

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Leapfrog Edge for its estimation capability,

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and then a whole host of data management solutions,

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including central, depth, and it mesh deposit.

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For geotechnical analysis we have GeoStudio,

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and typically we’ve been really strong

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in the exploration space.

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And we’re now committed to investing

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into production geology,

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and ensuring that you have that same great user experience

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when it comes to your daily mine operations.

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So Seequent’s been in the mining industry

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for many years now,

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and over that time, we’ve observed several industry trends

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and many of the pin points that our users have.

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The first one, which is the biggie, is data management.

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More operational data is being captured every day.

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And this is rapidly increasing

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as data capture and creation becomes easier.

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It is going to be crucial for operations

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to effectively manage that data

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and to ensure that value is being captured from the data.

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As teams get bigger and remote work becomes more prevalent,

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it is going to be really, really important

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that collaboration and being able to work together

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in parallel on that same geoscience data

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needs to be made more possible.

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And with multiple teams working on that same data,

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versioning becomes important.

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Being able to track who did what and what they changed.

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And it is quite hard

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to track conversion geoscience data today,

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and more importantly,

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to see how that data is changing and evolving through time.

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What we see is that there’s quite often that version control

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is not existent, or it’s done manually.

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As you all know,

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in mining operations,

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it’s the time and speed of the workflow which is crucial.

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That needs to be fast and repeatable.

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And this often means that scripts and macros are created

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to cater for that workflow.

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And that workflow probably cumbersome to begin with.

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And the problem is that those scripts

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become harder to maintain or understand over time.

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And they become a bit of a black box as to how they work.

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And that becomes a problem when it gets to auditing

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and understanding how decision was made

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or how a particular value came to be.

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In terms of reporting,

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most operational reports are still done using Excel

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and compiled from manually into data,

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which can be prone to error.

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And finally integrations.

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We know that it takes a lot of software to operate a mine

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and the software needs to be able to communicate

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and exchange data and work together seamlessly

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to ensure your operation is as productive as it can be.

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So our objective is to address these challenges

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by building new software that makes mining geology easier.

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And enables you to understand the results

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and to create workflows that ensure the maximum value

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from your whole body is being captured.

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So our approach to addressing these problems

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is with Seequent Evo,

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and that is connecting together

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our powerful desktop applications

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with a whole suite of cloud capability.

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While also integrating with other products and partners

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through open APIs.

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And that will form an ecosystem of connected solutions.

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If you want to learn more about Seequent Evo,

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there’s a presentation on it yesterday by Penny,

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and you’re able to watch the recording.

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So we’ve been working really hard on improving

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the capability of Leapfrog for mining operations,

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and we have a bunch of new features coming out very soon.

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I’ll go through each one of these points in more detail

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on the following slides.

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But what we have coming out is a new octree sub block model.

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The ability to import sub block models,

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multiple drillhole databases, and grouped mesh evaluations.

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Following on from that release,

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we’re working on introducing slicer sets,

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new block model visualization options,

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proportional weighting on block models,

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and upgrading the polyline tool.

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And looking further out to the future,

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supporting the importing of block models

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in Leapfrog and Central and opening up more of our APIs

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for additional integrations and partnerships.

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So these next few features that are coming soon,

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it’s not everything coming soon,

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in the next three Leapfrog.

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These are just the, a few of the highlights

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stand out features that will really help you

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in your mining operations.

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And you can expect these to come out

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in about May this year.

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So we have a brand new block model,

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which is an octree style block model.

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Now this new block model in Leapfrog

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is much more efficient than an existing sub block model,

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and it will create field sub blocks

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along geological context.

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And this makes it faster for processing.

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It also now supports variable block size.

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So you can have different size blocks

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in the X, Y, and Z axis.

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And with this,

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we’re also supporting the input of sub block models

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into this new format.

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And I’ll talk to that in a sec.

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So what I have here is

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a video of the new block model in action.

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So on the release upgrade,

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you will find a new menu option

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for our new octree block model.

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Only create dialogue,

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you’ll see that as quite similar

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to the existing block models.

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However, the minimum block size must be an equal subdivision

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of the parent block size.

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So here you can see that the sub block size

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can be as small as 164th of the parent block.

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When it comes to adding an evaluation

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or triggering sub-blocks,

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you now have one tab instead of two.

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Anything that has a trigger

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will also be added as an evaluation.

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So how do I look at the blocks in the scene?

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You can see the sub blocks

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of minimum block size around those contexts.

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And finally turn on the mesh.

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You can see how those sub blocks have been triggered

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around the ore body.

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So, like I mentioned earlier,

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what this new block model structure

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we’ve also improved our interoperability

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with mine planning softwares

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such as (Indistinct) and Surpac, et cetera.

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You can now import block models

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right into Leapfrog as a CSV.

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And we’re looking at

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how we can still import other block model formats

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going into the future.

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We’re also introducing multiple drillhole databases

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to give you grade control and flexibility

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around your drilling data sources.

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You can now have as many holes as you like.

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And we have enabled the ability to remap

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between different drilling data sources easily.

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For example,

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you can now remap from ODBC to CSV and vice versa.

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In future, we’ll be supporting merging

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between multiple drillhole sets

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to make it easier for you to work with your drilling data.

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And finally, for that May release

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we have the grouped mesh evaluation.

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This is a really important feature as it breaks

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that existing paradigm in Leapfrog

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where a geological model is needed to be created

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to work with the block model.

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And that is no longer the case.

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And so we now support going directly

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from the mesh to the block model

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in the new tool,

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which is faster and less prone to errors.

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So this is what it looks like in action.

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I’ve got a group of three stops

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that I want to evaluate onto the block model.

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Under the combined models folder,

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you’ll find an option to create a new grouped mesh.

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And to this, I can add those same three meshes.

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Here, I can choose whether or not

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I’m classifying all the blocks

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that fall inside or outside the mesh.

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I’ll select inside.

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I can rename what I want the category to be called as.

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Here, I’ll rename it to stone 1

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and I can choose a custom color.

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Now there is a background value,

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so I can optionally classify all blocks therefore,

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outside those mesh volumes

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and set the custom category value.

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Here, I’m also editing that as well.

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So mining is a progressive process and there are overlaps.

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So we allow you to control the hierarchy

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of those overlapping relationships between meshes.

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So this will create a new object in the project tree,

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which can then be used to evaluate other objects

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like block models and points.

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Here, I’ll now apply the evaluation onto the sub blocks

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of the block model.

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So now visualizing a result,

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you can see that all the blocks centroids

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that fell inside that start volume

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will have been classified,

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and this will allow you to easily undertakes

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greater for reporting.

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So that’s what’s coming out very, very soon

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and something you can look forward to.

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But what’s coming up next with Leapfrog,

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a little bit later on,

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And these are again, just some of the feature highlights

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that will really help you in mining.

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And there’s obviously a lot more coming out

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than just what was talked about here today.

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So we’re adding the ability

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to import block models from Central,

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allowing you to work from that single shared block model

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across multiple Leapfrog projects.

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So there’ll be no need to pass a block model

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as a file between different users of Leapfrog.

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And you’ll be able to read and update only the block model

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subsets that you require,

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spin up your workflows as you don’t have to work

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with the full block model every time.

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And we know that in operations,

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you need to visualize the area of interests

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quickly and easily.

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So we add a new features that help you quickly navigate

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the scene to that (indistinct) or level plane.

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And so slicer sets will allow you

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the creation of safe slice planes

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that cut the scene view at specified edibles.

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And we’re going to be improving

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how we visualize block models

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to better support decision-making from the block model.

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And this will enable you

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to have all information you need, easily displayed,

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to make an informed production decision.

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We’ll be adding features such as text labels on block models

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and showing blocks as an outline.

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And this feature of proportional weighting

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will allow for accurate reports of mining volumes

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to reproduce without the need to create any sub blocks.

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And you can see in the figure there,

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it works by calculating the proportion of the mesh boundary,

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there is a distinct in each block,

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and we’ll add a new column to the block model

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that can then be used to weight values in reports.

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And finally, we’re improving our polyline tool.

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Adding new snapping options,

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the ability to copy and move the polyline

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and to extrude the 2D lines to form closed meshes

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So that brings us to the end.

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Thank you all for joining.

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And look out in the next couple of months

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for that new Leapfrog release

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with some of those new features.

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Please continue to let us know your feedback and insights

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as it helps inform how we make your job easier

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and what we work on next.

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So, yeah, I’ll now hand over to Peter

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to open the floor for any questions.

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<v Peter>Thank you very much, Ryan</v>

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for taking us through the roadmap

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for mining operation workflows.

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There’s a lot of really cool stuff there,

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and I am really excited

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to start testing them and using them for real.

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As Ryan mentioned,

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it’s now time for questions and answers.

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If you could either, you could put your questions

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into the questions box there in the webinar.

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I’ll go to webinar panel and I’ll read them.

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You have a moment while questions come in.

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It looks like we have a question.

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Can you remind us, please Ryan,

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when can we expect the first of the new features

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to be released.

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<v Ryan>In May, May this year.</v>

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So that’s the new block model importing sub-block models,

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the grouped mesh evaluation tool, and others.

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<v Peter>Sounds good, all right.</v>

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And another question is about the exchange formats.

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We support OMF, can you tell us what that is please?

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<v Ryan>So the open mining format is as a format</v>

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that has come from a committee of different software vendors

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and the GMG committee.

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And so it’s enabling better interoperability

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between software packages

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and so making it easier to exchange their geoscience data.

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So that sort of format that can hold a range of data,

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block models, drillholes, lines, points,

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there’s just one full extension that you can pass around.

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<v Peter>Great, I am familiar that we’re using</v>

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that currently at Leapfrog Geo to interface

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with Oasis Montaj for a geophysical grids

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and the like, so.

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<v Ryan>Yeah.</v>

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<v Peter>There is a another question her.</v>

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I’m having trouble reading it in the panel

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because it shrunk.

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When do you think OMF will include sub-blocked models?

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This is from Richard Inglis.

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<v Ryan>So then you, if your block model has</v>

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the same block size in the X, Y, and Z axis

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all may have full support the transfer of these new

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octree style grids.

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By the moment OMF doesn’t support variable

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octree block models.

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So you want to be able to transfer for the rest.

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<v Peter>Thank you.</v>

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Okay, there aren’t any more questions,

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and I guess we don’t want to have too much dead air,

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so I guess we could wrap it up.

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Thank you again, Ryan.

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And thank you everyone for attending this presentation.

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I hope you found it as interesting as I did and worthwhile.

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(upbeat music)