Hexagon’s Mining division has added to the capabilities of its mine planning software, HxGN MinePlan, with a new release that, it says, brings new functionality to MinePlan 3D, MinePlan Schedule Optimizer and MinePlan Project Evaluator, along with vast improvements in performance and speed.

MinePlan 3D is the hub of all Hexagon’s mine planning tools and activities, with the latest release improving performance and responding to customer feedback, the company said.

The new reserves engine is now integrated into the Autoslicer tool, allowing users to select between legacy and new reserve logic setups to slice by tonnes as a target. This allows users to quickly generate shapes to help meet planning requirements.

The new reserves engine can be used in the Pit Expander, enabling users to select between legacy and new reserve logic setups to run bench reserves while designing a pit. Audit pit reserves during the design process, meanwhile, ensure best design and comparison with strategic pit optimization.

MinePlan Schedule Optimizer (MPSO) ensures optimal scheduling with great detail, with Hexagon enabling mid-range planning and hybrid scheduling, combining optimal and manual scheduling.

Block Schedule Coding is a new feature which allows users to code back MPSO period and destination schedule results to the block model. This reconciles optimisation and operational models and assists in pre-targeting material for short-range planning and grade control.

Shovel Control (screenshot, pictured) assigns shovels to areas, phases, benches and cuts in advanced constraints. Users can limit the number of shovels applied to a given cut per period. This will help generate more operational schedules by controlling shovel allocation and movement, the company says.

Improved with speed and greater performance, MinePlan Project Evaluator ensures a user’s long-term plan starts with an economically optimised shell.

The ability to skip invalid cases in a task with multiple runs allows multi-case runs to continue regardless of invalid cases, and without the need to monitor process time, the company says.

Users can also now limit their pit optimisation by an existing surface, speeding up run time for optimisation as fewer blocks will need to be analysed.