It’s Tip Tuesday! Today’s post comes from Jennifer Khorommbi, one our Technical Support Consultants.

When working with GEOVIA GEMS™, it is most common to create a solid from tied polylines; however, there are other ways of creating a solid without using tied polylines. A solid can also be created from drillhole intersects using ‘Create a solid from two non-intersecting surfaces’– just follow these steps.

First you have to create the surfaces to use:

1.  Use the Drillhole > Select > Select and Snap Settings to Select the Table that you want to use and the position in the interval to create the surface for. For example, the interval’s ‘From’ position.

2.  Choose the rock code or other value that identifies the drillhole intervals to use Drillhole > Select > Select Drillhole Intersects by Field Value. If you are creating the Hanging Wall (top) surface, ensure that you select the ‘first occurrence’ of the text value in the drillhole. The intersects are now your ‘active data’.

TIP:  For intersects to be displayed, the Table and the Field must be correct. When you type in the text to use as the field value, ensure the text is exactly the same as in the data sheet (capitalisation, etc.) – if it is not the same, the intersects will not be displayed. If the setup is correct and the intersects are still not displayed, check the display overrides and ensure the ‘show the intersects’ box is selected.

3.  Surface > Create > Create surface from active data will create the surface based on the intersects selected. Once you created the one surface, you will have to redo steps 1 and 2 ensuring that you select the ‘other’ side of the intervals. For example, the ‘To’ position in the interval and the ‘last’ occurrence in the drillhole for the Footwall (bottom).  

TIP: If the surface does not show after you have created the surface, double check that both the Solid Render Tab and Draw as Triangulation Tab are turned on.

4.  Solid > Create > Create solid from two non-intersecting surfaces.  You will be prompted to digitize tie line(s) between the surfaces to stitch the them together to create a solid. You can create multiple tielines connecting the corresponding nodes on the edges of the surfaces. To finish the stitching, right click anywhere on the screen.

5.  Once the solid has been created, check for errors (Solid > Utils > Check for Errors) and then run volume calculation (Solid > Utils > Report Volume/Size of Single Solid) to check your work.

And that’s it – by following these steps, you can quickly and easily create solids from two non-intersecting surfaces.

Looking for more GEMS Tips & Tricks? Check out some of our past posts

Name Your Section in GEMS
Using Soft Boundaries for Advanced Interpolation in GEMS 
Understanding Block Model Manipulation on Attributes 

Should you have questions or like more information, visit the GEOVIA Support Centre today.

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When mining companies seek to increase mine productivity, they turn to Dassault Systèmes for technology and services. It is home to world-renowned and award-winning mining solutions and to industry thought leaders who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in mining, through the GEOVIA brand. The largest global supplier of mining software, GEOVIA delivers comprehensive solutions in all major mining centers in more than 130 countries at over 4,000 sites.

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