The diagram above shows the general steps associated with the
creation of a mine plan with the Underground Timing routine.
Pre-requisites include:
The drawing
above shows the North Main panel with 5 panels to the right.
The panel perimeters are drawn on the PERIM layer. The panels
in this example were placed using Pick and Place.
The Mining Project dialog box above
shows some of the key files used in the mine timing. Options
on the right side become active depending on the items selected on
the left side.
The underground timing scheduling dialog box provides options to assign panels to be mined to the equipment, insert delays between panels, input the plan start date, number of shifts/day, and undo the current report. Disregard the bottleneck options for underground mining. The underground timing routine calculates the time needed to complete the assignment, calculates coal quantities and qualities, draws results period by period, and produces a production report. In the order to calculate timing, every panel needs to be assigned to equipment. The left listbox lists the available equipment. Use Add button to create a new equipment or edit to change the definition of the defined one. This list is stored within the mine plan and is different for every plan. The Edit button calls the same dialog as the Define Equipment function.
The middle listbox shows panels currently assigned to the crew
highlighted in the left listbox (if any). To assign a panel to the
equipment, first click on the equipment name, then on the panel
name in the right listbox and at last on the Assign button.
Panels are mined in the same order as they appear in the list. To
complete mining of all assigned panels successfully the order
should not be controversial (i.e. NMAINS <1:2> can not appear
before NMAINS <B:1>). To change sequence of mining click on
the desired panel name and use Do Earlier or Do Later
buttons to change the order. The Remove button removes the
highlighted panel from the list of the panels assigned to the
current crew and moves it to the right listbox. Use Add
Delay button to add delay (for moving of equipment, maintenance
or other reason) after highlighted panel. After all panels for
first crew has been added click the next crew and repeat until all
the panels needed are added.
Screen Pick will allow for selecting the panels graphically on the screen. Each panel is hatched with solid fill to give instant feedback that the panel has been assigned. If pin points are in the panel, it will only hatch up to the next pin point, allowing the panel to be assigned in order as separate entities. When the assignment is completed click the Calculate button. Check the timing report produced and make sure that all assigned panels have been developed. If the process terminates earlier, the rest of the plan was inaccessible for some sequencing reason. Modify the assignment if needed and click Calculate again. During retreat mining it is possible that a sub-panel will be completed later that the panel itself. If this conflict occurs the calculation algorithm will try to offset start date of the panel itself to get timeout sufficient to resolve the problem. In the case when a problem could not be resolved an alert box with corresponding message will appear.
The time needed to develop a panel is offset by the Extraction Ratio and Difficulty Factor defined in the Edit Panel Dialog, and thickness and density of coal and rock defined by the Edit Panel Attributes function. The presence of qualities in the production report depends on the list of panel attributes and their values defined by the Edit Panel Attributes function.
In cases when the mine plan includes retreat (second) mining, the system will make sure that when the parent panel is mined on retreat, the mining (advance or retreat) in all child panels is completed. If not it tries to offset the starting date of retreat in the parent panel until the timing conflict is resolved. Sometimes it is impossible to do so and program reports the problem to user for manual resolution.
Reporting Options
Period Sizing
Text Block Labeling
Options
Hatching Options
Using Property
Boundaries
Sub-Divide by properties controls whether system tries to use
property lines and do calculations on per property basis.
Other Output
Options
If development
progress drawn is not satisfactory and the scheduling needs to be
adjusted, use Undo Report button in Timing dialog to remove
drawn report entities. After the dialog is completed, the
mining development is shown step by step and then the coal
production report is generated. The report format may be modified
to suite the particular need and preferred format saved for further
use. See Reference Manual for complete description of Report
Formatting dialog. There is a progress window displaying the time
elapsed and the time remaining for large schedules that require a
lot of time.
The User Defined Attribute tab leads
to a dialog where custom attributes can be created.
The Attribute options opens with a
list of the attributes above, providing display and formatting
options below.MS Excel
When the MS Excel tab is open
reports can be exported directly to new or existing spreadsheets,
beginning on any specified sheet, row and column. There are
also options to include totals and text header information in the
file. When the options have been specified click on the
Export to Excel
button. The spreadsheet below was exported using this
option.Import/Export Options
At the Export button
under Import/Export tab
there are 5 options shown above.
Rpt format reports can be merged
together, as shown above. The rpt reports are the reports
that can be loaded and viewed even after the underground timing
routine is closed.
Prompts
Select any part of mine plan: Pick any centerline in
the mine plan
Underground Timing Dialog
Pull-Down Menu Location: AdvMine
Keyboard Command: schedule_mine