OreChaser - Drillhole Planner & Infill Drilling Plan Optimizer

GeoMine-OreChaser (OreChaser) is a drillhole planner and infill drilling plan optimizer for both open-pit and underground mines. 

OreChaser Planner provides tools for manually creating planned drillholes in cross sections or in 3D and tools for batch mode creation of gridded drill holes in 3D, subject to topography and/or polygonal region constraint(s).

OreChaser Optimizer is a generative optimizer that uses machine learning to allow drill planners to determine the optimum number, positions and lengths of additional drillholes required to maximize the resource uplift for a given drill budget. OreChaser Optimizer features a proprietary 3D Genetic Algorithm with the choice of two search strategies: RocDP (Randomized Ore Chasing Drilling Plane) strategy and (FRD) Fully Random Drilling strategy, both to maximize metal recovery while minimizing Kriging variances under the specified drilling budget.

Unlike most other competing drillhole optimizers, which can only generate non-directional drillholes, the infill drillholes auto-generated by OreChaser Optimizer can be either directional or non-directional with an optional fan-out configuration, and they can start either from a topographical surface (for Open-pit mines) or from mine accesses (for underground mines). Furthermore, OreChaser Optimizer also provides a slew of options, allowing the users to quickly adapt and customize the underlying Generic Algorithm to suit their own specific data set.

Another unique module of OreChaser is the impact evaluator which enables drill planners to evaluate the impact of manually planned drill holes on an existing drilling programme.

OreChaser Key Benefits

  • Flexible: Both manual and automated planning modes are supported. OreChaser Optimizer can operate either as a generative optimizer or as an impact evaluator.
  • Fully Integrated: Available as OreChaser Planner, OreChaser OptimizerOP (for open-pits) and OreChaser OptimizerUG (for underground mines) in the GeoMine platform.
  • Highly Configurable：OreChaser Optimizer includes a large # of user-options.
  • Easy-to-Use：Features an integrated, non-blocking interface in an interactive WYSIWYG 3D modeling environment.

OreChaser Feature List

Foundation Feature List - included

Imports assays, attributes (categorical or continuous) and geological structures, including faults; Desurveys drillholes with choices of 5 desurvey algorithms; Composite and color-code drillholes by lithology, attributes or assays; Creates custom DDH attributes as input to subsequent block model interpolations; Creates planned drill holes for drilling planning.

Creates composites from drillholes for use with OreChaser.

Manually creates planned drillholes incrementally in cross sections or 3D, subject to topography constraints; Creates gridded RC holes in batch mode, subject to topography and/or polygonal region constraint(s).

Given an existing block model, composites and resource classification criteria, determines N-best infill drilling plans. For each plan, computers the positions and lengths of the required additional drillholes to maximize the resource uplift while minimizing Kriging variances under a given drill budget.

Choice of two search strategies: RocDP (Randomized Drilling Plane) strategy for targeted drilling and faster convergence, and FRD (Fully Random Drilling) strategy for exhaustive search.

Option for using a fan-out hole configuration.

OreChaser Optimizer offers both open-pit and underground modules, which are licensed separately. Drillholes can originate from topography (for open-pit mines) or mine accesses (for underground mines.

Rapid evaluation of the impact of planned drill holes on the existing drilling programme.

Outputs the uplifted resource (ore tonnage and metal quantity) and cost of each planned drill hole.

Plots tonnage vs. cost curve for each drilling plan to show the relationship between the uplifted tonnage and the expected drilling cost; Compares the tonnage vs. cost curves of different drill plans within a single graph; Exports chosen drill plans to CSV files for further processing and/or sharing.

Blocks Uplifted by OreChaser
Blocks Uplifted by OreChaser
Infill Drilling Plan Optimizer
OreChaser Input and Output

System Requirements: