Creating Images of your Underground Schedule in GEOVIA Minex

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In today’s tip I’ll be discussing how to easily create images or snapshots in time of an existing underground schedule in GEOVIA Minex. This is a follow up from my previous post on how to replay an existing underground schedule. GEOVIA Minex allows engineers to illustrate schedule scenarios and provide a visualization of multiple schedule options to present to management for easy decision making.

Before we start, please ensure that:

  • Your Underground Project (*.ugpr) is open
  • Your Geometry (*.GM3) files are open

In this example, we are using an existing schedule for a mine design that begins with a drift and utilizes development, pillar, and longwall mining methods. In just a few steps we are able to playback the existing schedule and capture snapshots of the mine schedule.

  1. Access the Schedule Playback feature via the menu bar as shown below, or via the shortcut icon that can be located on the toolbar.

  2. On the Playback Settings tab, select the pit or mine area you would like to display. Once we select the mining area, we can edit the period that we want to simulate by selecting Edit on the Playback Settings tab. Minex also allows you to use a date control file (.ctl) which is useful when you want to use time periods of unequal length in the schedule.
    In this example below, we will run the schedule from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2016 using a playback period length of one (1) week increments.
    Select Save to return to Schedule Playback form.
  3. Next, move to the third tab labeled Graphics Capture. Tick the box next to Create an image for each time step as shown below.

  4. We can now select a predetermined image size and/or File Type. Select JPEG Image Format.

  5. Finally, we can select the output directory where our image files will be saved. I’m storing the image files in the current project’s file structure under Graphics_Files\Image_Files.

  6. Once we have selected the location to store the images, click OK and run the schedule. While the schedule playback is running, Minex is capturing the graphics at every 1 week interval as selected.  If we open the folder location in File Explorer, we can see each image being captured as the schedule is playing.

  7. Each image that is stored is assigned a specific name which includes the day/month/year of the screen capture. We can easily jump to a period in time to analyze any possible bottlenecks. Now that our schedule is complete, it can be easily analyzed and shared with management.

TIP: Use Microsoft’s free Windows Movie Maker (or any image-to-video software) to easily create a video from the images to provide another alternative for presenting the schedule.

I hope you enjoyed this tip. Take a look at my previous post on Underground Schedule Playback and Updating Panel Configurations.

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Ryan Blackwell

Ryan Blackwell

Technical Specialist, GEOVIA at Dassault Systèmes
Ryan is GEOVIA Services Director, North America with over 13 years of experience in the mining industry. He provides consultative selling expertise to enterprise mining clients, with a focus on 3D applications, Mine production management, and business process transformation. Based in Ohio, USA, Ryan specializes in GEOVIA Minex and InSite and enjoys playing ice hockey in his spare time.