Volume/tons cutoff: In order for a bench
to be merged to a lower bench, all four cutoff values must be
greater than the volumes on the bench being considered. For
example, if a bench contains 150 CY of nonkey material and 50 CY of
key material, and the cutoff for all values is 100 (as shown
above), then the bench would not be merged to a lower bench because
the nonkey volume is greater than the cutoff value.
Benches to Process: This option determines is all benches will be considered for merging, or just a specific bench. If all benches are considered, the program will start at the uppermost bench and check to see if it can be merged to a lower bench. The next bench will then be considered, all the way down the pit. Note that if multiple benches can be merged, the will. For example, if both benches 1 and 2 are very small, they could both be merged into bench 3 if their sum is less than the cutoff. If a specific bench is selected, then only that bench number will be considered for merging.
Attribute Weighting: This option determines if quality values will be averaged based on the volume or the tonnage of the material.
Benches to Process: This option determines is all benches will be considered for merging, or just a specific bench. If all benches are considered, the program will start at the uppermost bench and check to see if it can be merged to a lower bench. The next bench will then be considered, all the way down the pit. Note that if multiple benches can be merged, the will. For example, if both benches 1 and 2 are very small, they could both be merged into bench 3 if their sum is less than the cutoff. If a specific bench is selected, then only that bench number will be considered for merging.
Attribute Weighting: This option determines if quality values will be averaged based on the volume or the tonnage of the material.
Key attributes will be weighted by either the key tonnage or the key volume.
Nonkey attributes will be weighted by either the nonkey tonnage or the nonkey volume.
Any attributes that include _TON_FACTOR or _VOL_FACTOR will be handled in such a way that the sum of all similar attributes does not exceed 1.000, as these attributes represent the percentage of each strata contributing to the total volume/tonnage of key or nonkey material in the bench. Any of these attributes ending in "_NK" refer to the nonkey portion of the bench, whereas attributes without this suffix refer to the key portion of the bench.
The below example shows two benches before merging (left) and after merging (right). Notice how different strata were merged into a single bench, but the relative percentage of TON_FACTOR and VOL_FACTOR has been recalculated so that the sum of all key tonnage/volume percentages does not exceed 1.000, and the sum of all nonkey tonnage/volume percentages does not exceed 1.000. In this example, attributes were weighted by tonnage, and the cutoff values were set to very large values to allow these benches to merge.
