Visualisation

Objective:

To generate a string which begins at the top of the dump, crosses the topo surface, then follows the ramp
down to the bottom of the pit. We will then drive along the string seeing the surfaces as they would appear
to a dump track negotiating a ramp.

The first step is to use the combined topo, pit and dump surface to digitise and then fit a string along the
desired path.

1. Open Pit_Dump_and_topo2.dtm, naming the layer Pit. If this DTM does not already exist, create it,
using strings as breaklines.
2. Render the DTM using the Render toolbar icon.

The file Pit_Dump_and_topo2.str was created by combining the topographic surface, pit design surface,
and dump design surface in the preceding plotting and dump design exercises.
The image below should be displayed on your screen.

3. Now select Create  Digitiser  Properties and enter the parameters as shown below and choose
Apply.
4. The elevation is set at 2000m so that the digitised line is visible above the topo surface, which has an
elevation of approximately1020m. Use of string number 9999 which doesn't presently exist in the layer
will allow us to easily save the string to a file by itself.

5. Use the digitiser toolbar icon or choose create  Digitise  New point at mouse location to design a
string across the land surface as shown, starting on top of the Dump.

6. Save the line to a file called DRIVE1.STR. Don't forget to specify the string number you used for
the digitised string:

7. The next step is to drape the DRIVE1.STR string over the topographic surface, to assign the topo
elevations to the drive string. The function to use is 'Drape strings over DTM' which can be found
under the Surface  DTM file functions menu.
8. Apply the following form, accepting the defaults which specify that the elevation of string file will
be modified to match the elevation of DTM.
9. Next we will add 5 metres to the DRIVE1.STR, so that it is slightly above the topographic surface.
Choose File  Reset  Graphics and use String maths from the File tools menu to achieve this.
Apply the form, and open the resulting file in Graphics.
Objective:

We could use the file Pit_Dump_and_topo2.dtm for our visualisation, however, having the topo, pit and
dump combined into a single DTM would limit our ability to colour each feature differently. Therefore we
will trim the excess triangles from the edges of the original Pit, Dump and topo files, then use those for the
visualisation.

Ensure you have DTM's of the following files which were created in previous exercises.

 PITDESIGN1.DTM
 DUMPDESIGN1.DTM
 TOP1.DTM

If you are missing any then create the DTM's using breaklines.

Open the PITDESIGN1.DTM file, then draw the strings without labels. Note the excess triangles outside of
the actual design strings indicated by the four arrows:

10. Choose Surfaces  DTM file functions Clip DTM by boundary string (alias 'dtmclip') to trim
off those excess triangles:
When clipping DTM's or applying boundaries to string files, you may be confused as to what to enter for
the field `Inside or Outside'. Ask yourself the question: `What do you want to keep?' If the answer is `The
triangles inside the boundary string' then enter `I' for inside. Conversely, if you wish to keep the triangles
outside the boundary string, then enter `O' for outside.
11. Compare the PIT_CLIP2.DTM with PITDESIGN2.DTM:
12. Repeat the process for DUMPDESIGN1.DTM, creating the file DUMP_CLIP1.DTM. View the file
first and use IP (identify point) to check the string number the outside string which will be the
boundary string.
13. Use the same method to trim a hole in the TOP1.DTM, where the pit is to be excavated. The
entries for the DTM Clip form are:

14. Repeat the clipping procedure to remove the redundant triangles from the edges of the
DUMPDESIGN1.DTM file:
Objective:

We are now ready to open each of the clipped DTM surfaces, colour them, then drive around the site.
1. At this point, you may wish to begin recording a macro, so that you can easily show your design to
others on site. Press 'F4' to begin recording the macro. Give a suitable name.
2. Open the file TOP_CLIP1.DTM and Render the DTM.
3. Choose Display  DTM:

4. Open the file PIT_CLIP2.DTM into a new layer (to generate a new layer simply type a new layer
name into the layer field on the Open File form. Rescale the view.
5. Choose Choose Display  DTM again, enter the parameters as shown below and choose Apply.
6. You should be viewing the following:

Be sure to open each of these files to a new layer. Otherwise when you draw a shell of the surface, it will
also re-colour the other surfaces in the same layer.
7. Open the file DUMP_CLIP1.DTM to a new graphics layer, without re-scaling.

8. Display  DTM of the Dump:

Your screen should display the following image:

9. Open the file DRIVE1.STR to a new layer called Drive, with rescaling.

10. Hide the string.

11. Display a single marker at the start of the string:
A single marker should be displayed near the top of the screen. Ensure that you can see the marker.
Activate layer settings 'L' and make all the layers except the Drive layer, not selectable:
12. Go to the View  Data view options menu and choose the View along a string function. (alias
'VAS')

Pick the marker from the Drive string and sit back and enjoy the ride.
13. Now hit 'F5' to stop recording the macro.
This ends the visualisation exercise.

Review

This is a great exercise to perform when you get back on site. You can do it with any of the surface files you
have on site, whether they are surveyed or design surfaces. Once you get things set up, make a Macro, with
the last two lines of the macro resetting the view, and looping back to the view along string function. Then it
will go around and around as a screen saver (you'll have to trigger it manually of course).

This concludes the training on the Surpac Vision Pit design module. In this manual we have tried to cover
the main areas of pit tools in a basic pit design. The functionality is more extensive then shown here and we
recommend you refer to the Online Reference Manual for more details on the extent of some functions.

These new Pit Tools provide a tremendous amount of flexibility in designing Pits and Dumps. We are sure
that your appreciation of the tools will grow as you are faced with more challenging designs.

Please feel free to provide feedback to SSI on the Pit Tools manual. As with much of Surpac's development,
enhancements to our products are driven, to a large extent, by the input from our users.

Where To Next

In the next section we will look at the Surpac/Whittle interface using the Block Model, followed by an
overview of each of the Whittle products.