Maptek has unveiled the new I-Site Studio 6, which includes new tools and requested enhancements.

“Surveyors are under pressure from all departments to quickly and safely survey active mining areas. This is on top of recurrent stockpile volumes and active mining face updates,” says Jason Richards, global business development manager for laser imaging solutions at Maptek. “With I-Site Studio 6, they have access to geotechnical analysis, conformance reporting, CAD and geology tools in one package.”

New CAD design tools include user-friendly preferences for snapping to angles and points. Other features include auto registration and alignment of scans, complex surface modeling, waviness analysis for geotechnical modeling and analysis.

Enhanced geotechnical options provide powerful tools for understanding structural relationships. Creating solids from discontinuities helps determine wedge shape, size and volume. Dynamic adjustment extends discontinuities to assess the potential persistence across pits or structural domains.

Stereonet improvements include new tools, preferences and workflows. A direct link between the interactive stereonet and 3D views allows users to select discontinuities in the 3D view window in order to highlight them on the stereonet.

Kinematic analysis has been overhauled in I-Site Studio 6. Defaults for failure types have been added, and failure zones are automatically shaded to highlight areas of potential failure on the stereonet. Dragging and dropping the discontinuity of the slope face onto the kinematic slope orientation fields automatically displays failure zones.

New CAD tools allow users to create CAD design outlines directly from 3D point cloud data, streamlining everyday survey and engineering tasks.

“Snapping preferences streamline CAD workflow and allow users to digitize from real world to CAD environment,” Richards says. “It’s easy to draft haul roads and ROM pad layouts, add strings for stockpile shadow zones and create CAD footprints of structures on site.”

A new 3D complex surface modeling tool produces a 3D surface that honors the original point cloud data, conforming around walls, curves and tunnels, as well as creating another surface by averaging the point set.

I-Site Studio 6 contains intuitive new tools for defining geological contacts directly from 3D point cloud data. Options such as applying patterns and fills to geological domains streamline mapping workflow.

The software makes the most of the output from up-to-date terrestrial scanning instrumentation and faster survey processes. Mining professionals can generate reliable, repeatable, high-quality reports. Customizable templates allow images and documents to be added so that one click generates a report that can be passed to production.

A new volume-reporting tool applies a base surface, stockpile surfaces and polygons to generate volumes for multiple regions in one pass. Design conformance reporting allows users to compare a design surface to as-built and other surfaces, summarizing sections, underdig, overdig and percentage of volume variance.

Surveyors are under increasing pressure to hand off results that are accurate and easy to understand, and they are being asked to do so with shorter turnaround. So the quicker they can compile accurate and meaningful reports, the better.

“I-Site Studio has matured into a powerful, fully-functioned software package that does more than just process point clouds,” Richards says. “Accurate data is crucial to a mine’s success. I-Site Studio makes survey data understandable and useful for all stakeholders.”

About Maptek
Founded more than 30 years ago, Maptek is a leading provider of innovative software, hardware and services for global mining. Maptek solutions are used at more than 1,800 sites in 75 countries, with applications across the mining cycle. Maptek develops software including Vulcan, Eureka, Evolution and BlastLogic for mine evaluation, planning, design, scheduling, operation and rehabilitation. I-Site is integrated hardware and software for 3D laser scanning, surveying and imaging. The spatial data collected can be used for geotechnical analysis, stockpile measurement, design conformance and movement tracking supported by software systems I-Site Studio, Drive, PerfectDig and Sentry.