Import Drillhole

This command imports drillholes into the drawing from a text file or database. There are many company-specific drillhole file formats available, but the Custom Import Formatter is flexible enough to handle almost any drillhole text file format. There are also two Carlson Standard Text formats and a Carlson Standard Database format that can be used to import from. The Mineral Drillholes format is similar to the Custom Import Formatter, but is intended for working with drillhole formats commonly associated with metal deposits. When the command is first executed, the below dialog will appear.

Custom Import Formatter

The Custom Import Formatter is the most flexible option. This option will allow you to select one or two files to define the drillhole locations and the strata information. If all both the collar and strata information are in a single file, choose "no" at this prompt. Note that if you choose "yes", the program will prompt you to select two files to import and will require you to configure two import dialogs.

The text files may be in a .txt, .asc, .dat, or .csv file format. It is very common to store the drillhole data in a spreadsheet, then export the data to one of these formats. The text files may be comma delimited, single space delimited, tab delimited, fixed width, or Auto-Fixed width. An example set of drillhole data in a spreadsheet is shown below.

Here it is important to note that a single drillhole is normally expected to span multiple rows in the spreadsheet. Here each sample in the drillhole is represented on a new row. There is an option to import drillholes with each drillhole spanning a single row (with additional columns specified for each strata type). Note that when a drillhole spans multiple rows, data relating to the collar should not change down the rows (northing, easting, and surface elevation), whereas any data relating to the strata should change down the rows (strata name, thickness, elevation, etc.).

After selecting the file(s) to import, the below dialog will appear. Note that if all of the data is imported in a single file, the first dialog shown below will appear. If two files are specified (one for the collar data, one for the strata data, the following two dialogs will appear).

Single File Imported

Two Files Imported

This dialog is divided into two columns: Available and Used. The idea is to move relevant items from the Available column to the Used column in the order they appear in the drillhole file. Note that the names used in the Available and Used columns do not need to match the header names used in the drillhole file (Carlson always uses a predefined name of "DRILLHOLE NAME", but the header in your file can be something else such as "Drill ID" if you prefer). Not all items are needed, but the ordering of the items is very important. In the above example, the Drillhole Name is the first item in the Used column. You will notice that the Preview Window at the bottom of the dialog shows a spreadsheet-style preview of the file to be imported. Here you can see that the Drillhole Name is the first column of the data, and therefore it must be the first item in the Used list. The second item, Northing, is the second column in the data file. Items that are not properly ordered will result in drillhole data not importing properly.

Items may be moved between the columns by double-clicking them, or by using the Add and Remove buttons. Custom attributes (assays of the strata, date drilled, water table elevation, etc) may be defined by clicking the Add Attribute button. Note that when adding a custom attribute, you will need to specify the attribute as a Drillhole attribute (meaning it doesn't change with depth) or a strata attribute (meaning it will have a unique value for each strata sample in the drillhole). In the above example, Attribute X has been defined as a strata attribute at the bottom of the Used column. Any data that does not need to be imported may be omitted by placing a SKIP in the Used column. This is added by clicking the Add Skip button. Items in the used list may be reordered by clicking the green up/down arrows to the right of the list.

When importing drillhole data, you may import elevations, depths, or thicknesses of each sample. You may use any combination of top/bottom elevations, depth, and thickness to specify the sample thickness. Note that if a thickness or depth is specified, they are assumed to be along the length of the drillhole (very important if the holes are angled). If you only import thickness or depth, elevations will be automatically calculated on import (dip angles will be used when determining elevation)

Delimiter: This option specifies the delimiter symbol used to mark columns in the data. For the fixed width format, choose the Fixed Width toggle and then enter the column numbers separated by spaces in the edit box. For example, "8 15 24 32". The Auto-Fixed width will scan entire file first and detect columns if you have some fixed width format - it will detect where breaks between columns are.

Header Lines to Skip: This option allows you to specify how many rows are simply headers for the actual data. These header lines should not be imported as data.

Add Only Key Strata: This option will only import strata tagged as "key". Any gaps between key strata will be filled in with a generic nonkey layer name.

Strata on one row: This option applies to text files where the entire drillhole is on one row. Each strata is identified by a unique name which is combined with the strata field name. This allows you to have multiple strata value fields such as thickness and name on the same row. For example, consider two strata named COAL_A and COAL_B. When you click the Add button to add the Strata Name, a dialog appears for entering the strata identifier. In this example, you could enter COAL_A. Then click the Add button again for Strata Name and enter id as COAL_B. This creates two strata name fields called COAL_A:Strata Name and COAL_B:Strata Name. Without the Strata on one row option, you can only have one Strata Name per row.

Fill In Interior or Top/Bottom Bed Names: These options will set the bed name for strata that have no bed name to the first bed name found in a strata below the missing bed name strata. If no bed name is found in lower strata, then the program will look for a bed name in the higher strata. In this way, all the strata are assigned bed names. Otherwise only the strata with bed names from the import text file will have bed names in the drillholes.

Dip Change Distance: This value is only needed when the Drillhole Top Dip and the Drillhole Bottom Dip attributes are imported (most users don't use this option). With these two attributes, it is assumed that the drillhole dip angle is only measured at the top and the bottom of the drillhole, rather than on a regular interval down the drillhole. When these top/bottom dip values are imported, the program will distribute the change in dip angle down the hole on this interval. For example, if this value is set to 10, the program would calculate a new dip angle every 10 down the length of the hole. It is important to note that there are three methods that can be used to determine how the angle varies. These three options for the Dip Angle Method are described in Carlson Configure.

Current Attribute File: This option lists the current .atr file associated with the drawing. Clicking the ellipsis button will open the Define Attributes dialog. It is important to note that in order to import String attributes (anything other than a numeric value), you will need to pre-define the attribute as a string entity in the .atr file.

Test Import: This button will check that you have added necessary attributes to the Used column. If any of these attributes are left out, the program will fail to create the drillholes properly. It is important to note that this button does not check for all possible errors in the data; it only checks for the following conditions:

It is worth mentioning that three checks are automatically applied to the drillhole import.

The Load and Save buttons allow you to save and recall the Custom Import Formatter settings to a settings file with a .IMPT file extension. Note that this file previously used an .IMP extension, but the actual format of the file has not changed. If you have a .IMP file that needs to be loaded, you may simply change the extension to be .IMPT.

Notes on specific attributes to be imported are listed below. Again, it is important to note that not all of these attributes are required, but the attributes that are required are marked with an asterisk (*). For each of these attributes, special characters such as exclamation points (!), pound signs (#), etc. are not recommended (though some are supported)

It is important to note that if the dip/azimuth measurements are in a separate text file, this information can later be applied to the drillholes with the Import Dip/Azimuth command.

Carlson Standard Text

The Carlson Standard Text formats include a complete format that has all the drillhole data options and a simple format that contains the necessary fields. These Carlson format drillhole text files can be created with the Drillhole Export routine. Both formats are shown below. This standard format uses key-coded lines with comma separated entries. String entries are enclosed in single quotes. The first line of the file is a keyword VERSC13.2 to recognize the version of the data file.

The simple standard format does not have all the functionality of the complete format but is easier to create. The program will automatically recognize which format is used. The sample simple format is shown in the first figure below, the complete is the second example. The separate data values on a row are separated by commas in this format. The first line contains the key-strata attribute names and the second line contains non-key strata attribute names. If there are no attributes, these lines would be left blank. Starting at the third line are the strata data lines which continue to the end of the file. A strata data line consists of drillhole name, northing, easting, surface elevation, strata name, strata bottom elevation, strata type (KEY or NON-KEY), and attribute values if any.

Carlson Standard Database

The Carlson Standard Database option is the only format that is a database file and not a text file. This database format is an Access MDB file with TABLE_DRILLHOLE and TABLE_STRATA tables that have the Carlson required fields as described in the Drillhole Database portion of this manual under Define Drillhole. When importing from the Carlson database, you can filter by drillhole name, polyline area or query. To import all the drillholes, use the drillhole name option with a name of "*" for everything. The polyline area option will only import drillholes within the selected closed polylines. The query option filters the drillholes by the specified SQL query using the drillhole database fields.

Other Specific Formats

Other Specific Formats are hard-coded imports for data from specific mines or other software formats. Most of the time, the Custom Formatter is used, but if the holes are already in one of these formats, then they can be imported directly. If there is a format that doesn't follow a pattern that the Custom Formatter can use, then the import can be done by custom programming with these Other Formats.

Prompts

Select Drillhole Configuration File .ch file created by Define Drillhole. This dialog appears once. To change Configuration file use Mining Project Manager.
Choose Format Dialog
The prompting for other import formats may be different.

Pulldown Menu Location: Drillhole > Import/Export Drillholes
Keyboard Command: chimport