PRODUCT NEWS - New Gemcom Surpac to increase productivity

Gemcom Software International says its latest version of geology and mine planning software program Surpac delivers block modelling performance up to 100 times faster than its previous edition. Surpac 6.3 is suitable for every commodity and mining method with increased efficiency and productivity through ease-of-use and workflow automation.

Gemcom says the new version greatly improves efficiency by providing enhancements within solids validation, pit design, block modeling, CAD import and support of third party file formats.

The software has new key features including solids repair functionality, which reduces manual solids validation time from days to minutes, while auto correction repairs invalid solids and manual repair allows for a detailed examination of each problem area within spatial context.

“Solids repair is the most exciting enhancement in this release,” says technical product manager Leon Dickinson. “This functionality was requested by the market. We heard from Surpac users that they valued the way Surpac is strict in solids and surface validation, but that they wanted a tool to identify, visualize and fix problem areas within solids, particularly when obtaining solids from third party packages.

“Our Research and Development team looked to the gaming and medical imaging industries for ideas. The result is new functionality that substantially exceeds user requests,” he says.

Canadian Zinc Corporation’s Prairie Creek mine engineer Dustin Smiley says Surpac 6.3’s new solids repair function is fast and intuitive. “When developing underground mine designs and schedules, it is often necessary to combine stopes. However, depending on how they are generated, it can be a challenging and time consuming process to go back to the original solids. Surpac 6.3 proceeds step-by-step to identify and correct problem areas. Thanks to Surpac, all the solids I generate are now valid and water tight.”

Surpac 6.3’s pit design functionality has also been enhanced to allow the creation of pit designs using block models for slope angle and width, in order to better cater to variation in rock type and geotechnical characteristics. Alternative pit designs can be rapidly generated using the new multi bench design function.

Hear The ASIA Miner editor John Miller’s exclusive interview with Gemcom president Rick Moignard regarding the acquisition of the company by Dassault Systèmes on The ASIA Miner’s website – www.asiaminer.com

www.gemcomsoftware.com