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Solid Expansion Tool
Mining Software
Input data
MineSight® requires data to be selected in the selection buffer before the Solid Expansion
dialog is enabled. Expansion operations can be performed on individually picked solids or
on a whole selection. The tool preserves the attributes of the selected solids in the result.
MineSight® uses a variety of triangulated data. This includes triangulated LGO grids,
2-D surfaces, 3-D solids with openings, as well as closed solids. Only perfectly closed solids
can be used for the expansion operation. All usual requirements for solids used in tools
elsewhere in MineSight® apply here as well. This includes absence of openings, internal
walls, and self-intersections.
In MineSight®, a solid may consist of multiple, geometrically separate components. These
components are just normal solids which are merged together in the same MineSight®
element. Therefore, components cannot be individually selected and they must have the
same attributes as other components of the solid.
There are no restrictions on how components can be located in respect to each other.
They can fully enclose other components (in which case they serve as voids or holes) or be
on the same level. However, it is not valid to have a component that is only partially inside
of the other component. The Solid Expansion tool does not limit a solid to a number of
components or a number of holes it may have.
The Solids Expansion tool can simultaneously process a number of such multi-component
solids. When several solids are selected for the operation, they are expanded independently
from each other. Different solids do not interfere with each other in any way. For example,
the result of simultaneous expansion of two solids would be the same if those solids were
expanded separately in two separate runs of the tool.
Types of Expansion
The Solid Expansion engine offers one unrestrained and three restrained expansion
operations. These include isotropic expansion, expansion in plane, two-directional
expansion along a line, or one-directional expansion along a vector.
In un-restrained isotropic expansion, the solid is expanded and/or shrunk equally in
all directions while in other operations, each triangle of a solid is be expended or shrunk
depending on it 3-D orientation. 24th
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Mintec
Seminar
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Solid Expansion Tool
Isometric expansion
24th
Annual
Mintec
Seminar Expansion in plane
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Solid Expansion Tool
Mining Software
24th
Annual
Mintec
Seminar
One-directional expansion along vector
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Solid Expansion Tool
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Solid Expansion Tool
Max deviation
from true shape
Expansion
envelope Mining Software
The expansion engine offers two levels of accuracy—high and low. This affects how
accurately it will present the expanded area by adding more or fewer points to the arch.
Accuracy is proportional to the absolute value of expansion width. When required, a
higher accuracy can always be achieved when total expansion is preformed as a sequence of
smaller expansions.
Accuracies introduced while shrinking are negligible and caused mostly by precision of
floating point operations.
Regardless of the expansion width used or the level of accuracy, it is always possible to
know the maximum possible deviation of the result from ideal shape.
Summary
The Solid Expansion tool is a new powerful and useful addition to the existing CAD
modeling utilities of MineSight® 3-D. It is presented with a simple interface that exposes
the full functionality of the geometry engine. The tool offers four types of expansion and
shrinking that can be performed in any 3-D orientation.
Appendix
Fig. 1 Expanding and shrinking a cone
24th
Annual
Mintec
Seminar
Page
Solid Expansion Tool
Mining Software
24th
Annual
Mintec
Seminar
Page