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6.14.1 SHOTPlus™ Beta Release Notes

Last updated

6.14.1

SHOTPlus™

Surface

Beta

March, 2023

Version 6.14.1 of SHOTPlus™ Beta, first offered to users on Thursday 23rd March 2023.
A notification will appear on start-up in SHOTPlus™ Beta once the update is available.
For further information on updating the SHOTPlus™, please contact the BlastIQ™ Support Team via support.blastiq.com.

  Important

This upgrade will include changes affecting backwards compatibility.

SHOTPlus™ has undergone a refactor of it’s blasthole data structure. This work was undertaken to improve integration between SHOTPlus™ and BlastIQ™ to better align the information presented to users when comparing blast design information as well as blast outcomes within the BlastIQ™ ecosystem.

What does this mean for users:

  • Existing files, saved in versions prior to SHOTPlus™ Beta 6.14.1, will still open in newer versions moving forward.
  • Existing files, saved in the newer SHOTPlus™ Beta 6.14.1 and onwards, will no longer be compatible with prior versions.
  • Existing Text Import and Text Export Templates using superseded terminology for data fields will link to data fields with new terminology on first use.

Due to the above compatibility issues it is recommended that updates of for SHOTPlus™ are completed ASAP for all users.

Detailed information of these changes can be found in this Knowledge Base Article: SHOTPlus™ Blasthole Refactor

  New

  • A blasthole data and terminology restructure has been undertaken to rationalise Design/Drill/Measurements data. The new blasthole data structure is designed to also improve integration between SHOTPlus™ and BlastIQ™. 
      • More properties can now be stored against blastholes1. 
      • "Actual" terminology has been removed for blasthole data2.
      • "Drilled" terminology has been introduced and standardised.
      • "Measured" terminology has been introduced and standardised.
      • Introduction of "Surveyed Collar" properties.
      • Introduction of "Adjusted Design Length"3. 
      • Design hole properties can be nullable when holes are imported from BlastIQ™4.
  • A new "Tolerances" section has been added to the "Blast Properties" settings. 
      • Added checkbox to enable or disable, the ability to calculate tolerances using "Adjusted Design Length"3.
  • Added a "Survey Assessment" workflow
      • Users can capture plan and face views of their survey data to add to a "Survey Assessment" report. 
      • The output report will gives users a print out showing the captured images with a useful summary of survey data points5.
  • New "Exclusion Area Tool" features:
      • Added "Exclusion Area Tool" page to "Blast Properties". Users can define template default values to be used in the tool6.
      • Added "Calculation Details" when using "Blast Properties" and "Measured (where available)" for charge weight basis7.

  Information

    1. More information can be found here: SHOTPlus™ Blasthole Refactor
    2. The "Actual" terminology was previously used to describe information about holes that generally came from field data sources. It did not accurately allow for delineation of drilling and measurement data which comes from drilling operations and blasthole QAQC respectively. Additionally this missing delineation meant that some inferences had to be made about data origins when synchronising with BlastIQ™. Properties that used to be considered "Actuals" are now more accurately delineated into the "Drilled" and "Measurements" categories. "Actual Loading" properties still exist.
    3. "Adjusted Design Length" is a calculated length between new drilled or measured collar coordinates to the design toe. Backfills and redrills are calculated using this length and relevant tolerances applied. Users can view this property in the "Edit Hole" dialog or "Design History" > "Parameter Changes".
    4. In some situations, holes from BlastIQ™ may not contain "Design" properties e.g. when holes are created in the field on BlastIQ™ Mobile. SHOTPlus™ now aligns with this capability to have null "Design" properties and describes the hole from Drilled and Measured properties. However, if holes are imported via the "Text Importer", or created in SHOTPlus™, these must still have a minimum set of "Design" properties to describe the hole.
    5. Summary details include:
        • "Count of data points" based on Data Type.
        • "Total No. Face Points".
        • "Face Point Density".
        • "Min/Max Distances Between Face Points".
        • "Interval" distances.
    6. Default values that can be defined:
        • Flyrock Calculation Inputs.
          • Constants for - "Face bursts", "Cratering", "Stemming Ejection".
          • "Cratering Dispersion Angle".
          • "Direction of Throw".
        • "Markout" options.
          • "Safety Factor".
        • "Constant Radius" inputs
          • "Maximum Horizontal Distance"
          • "Maximum Vertical Distance"
    7. The new details dialog will list all holes and the burden distance, as well as stemming used for the flyrock distances calculation. It will also show which holes have "Actual Loaded" charge decks that were used for the calculation, indicated by the "Is Measured" field. 

  Improved

  • The Edit Hole dialog has been re-designed to suit the new blasthole data structure1.
  • The Text Importer and Exporter has been updated to match the new blasthole data structure1. 
      • Added "Drill Data" tab which contains fields to match the new "Drill data" properties.
      • Updated Measurements tab with deprecated fields removed, and new fields added2,3.
      • Added validation for minimum required fields when importing drilled data to ensure consistency when synchronising data to BlastIQ™4. 
      • If the minimum sets of drill data fields are not imported a warning message will appear. The user has the ability to continue, with the caveat that some fields will be inferred for export to BlastIQ™.
      • Added validation to check drill data being imported is for holes that already exist in the plan or is a re-drill of an existing hole.
  • "Hole Table" has been updated to match the new blasthole data structure.
      • "Drill Adjusted Design Length" has been added to the "Hole Data" tab.
      • "Actual Length" has been renamed "Measured Length".
  • Other improvements on SHOTPlus™ and BlastIQ™ integration with the following:
      • Consistency of charging rules when using "Loading Tables" and hole length intervals are not defined5. 
      • Added validation when exporting plan with inferred drill data to BlastIQ™. A new warning has been added when this occurs6.
      • Added validation when exporting plan with inferred design data to BlastIQ™. A new warning has been added when this occurs7.
      • Improved warning message when BlastIQ™ site has invalid Blast Control License.
  • "Exclusions Area Tool" has been improved.
      • "Exclusion Zone Tool" has been renamed to "Exclusion Area Tool" for consistency of terminology across regions. 
      • Users can now enter a different flyrock "k" factor for each flyrock mode i.e. face bursts, cratering, stemming ejection.
      • The minimum burden calculation is now much more accurate and is based on charge deck position8.
      • More charge deck types are considered for the flyrock calculations.
          • Air decks that are contiguous with explosive decks are now considered as explosive decks for the purposes of the calculations9.
          • Decoupled explosives are treated as fully coupled explosive decks10.
      • The polygon markout logic has been improved when using the "Manual Entries" as a calculation method11. 
  • A new warning has been added when exporting "Charging" or "Initiation" rules to quarry type sites. This is to alert the user that the dynamic rules aren't supported, however the loading design that exists already will still be exported.
  • Ability to import design holes using toe centric coordinate data12.
  • "Clear Actuals" has been removed from Edit Hole dialog, and moved to "Tools > Holes > Clear Actuals".
  • Additional options have been added to "Clear Actuals"13.
  • The 3D distance calculation used in the "Profile Wizard" and print out reports has been improved14.
  • SHOTPlus™ will update the setting to use "Adjusted Design Length" calculations for backfills/re-drills based on the same imported setting from the BlastIQ™ site.
  • The expanded/collapsed state of the each group in the "Filter and Search", "Visibility Manager" views will be saved and displayed again on restart of the application. 

 Information

    1. More information can be found here: SHOTPlus™ Blasthole Refactor
    2. The Measurements tab has had some deprecated properties removed. "Actual Length" is now named "Measured Length". "Is Redrilled" has been removed as "Redrilled of" exists.
    3. The new "Surveyed Collar" X/Y/Z data fields have been added for importing. 
    4. Validation logic is as follows:
      • Checks the minimum sets of drill data fields to be imported together. 

        • "Drilled Collar X", "Drilled Collar Y", "Drilled Collar Z", "Drilled Length", "Drilled Angle", "Drilled Bearing"; OR

        • "Drilled Collar Z", "Drilled Collar Y", "Drilled Collar Z", "Drilled Toe X", "Drilled Toe Y", "Drilled Toe Z".

    5. When using "Loading Tables" in charging rules, SHOTPlus™ will apply charge calculations to holes even if the hole length falls outside of the table length ranges. It does so by increasing or decreasing the nominated variable deck to suit the length of hole. However, this calculation for holes outside of the table range was not persistent in BlastIQ™ Mobile. This improvement now allows BlastIQ™ Mobile to behave the same as SHOTPlus™.
    6. When exporting plans to BlastIQ™, if there are missing drilled properties to describe a complete drilled hole geometry, SHOTPlus™ will infer them from the "Best Available" properties. A warning has been added to alert the user when this occurs. 
    7. When exporting plans to BlastIQ™, if there are missing design properties to describe a complete design hole geometry, SHOTPlus™ will inferred them from the "Best Available" fields from "Measured" or "Drill data". A warning has been added to alert the user when this occurs. 
    8. The exclusion markout polygon when using the "Blast Properties" method is based on a calculated burden for each hole. Previously the minimum burden calculation for face bursts and cratering was calculated from the entire length of hole, to vertices on the face surface. The calculation is now based on charge deck positions along the hole.
    9. As an increased safety factor consideration, air decks that are sharing common borders to explosive decks are now modelled as explosive decks for the purpose of the maximum potential flyrock calculation. The greater of the above or below immediately adjacent explosive bulk deck will be used to assign a charge mass/m to the air deck. 
    10. As an increased safety factor consideration, decoupled explosive charges, such as packaged presplits, will be modelled as fully coupled explosive decks. The charge mass/m will be recalculated from the density of the packaged product, and the volume of the deck where the packaged explosive is placed.
    11. Previously, when using the "Manual Entries" calculation method, the cratering exclusion polygon around any hole were trimmed inappropriately in the scenario where the potential face burst maximum distance was greater than the potential cratering maximum distance. This does not truly reflect the multidirectional potential for flyrock travel from cratering. The cratering exclusion polygons will now never be trimmed to better represent the true directional potential.
    12. To import toe centric coordinates for design holes, the following fields are required:
      • "Hole ID", "Toe X", "Toe Y", "Toe Z", "Angle (collar down)", "Bearing (collar down)", "Length".
    13. "Clear Actuals" now has the following options:
      • "Comments".
      • "Measured Length (formerly dip length)".
      • "Water Measurement".
      • "Temperature".
      • "Abandoned".
      • "Not Drilled".
      • "Measured Diameter".
      • "Measured Collar".
      • "Drill Data".
      • "Actual Loading".
      • "Select All (to clear all actuals from hole)".
    14. The 3D distance in the "Profile Wizard" and print outs previously calculated distances from a point along the hole to the nearest vertex of the face surface. The new calculation now makes this comparison to the closest position on the face surface itself. 

  Fixed

  • When users attempted to import drill holes using toe centric coordinates, the imported holes would incorrectly interpret the toe coordinate data as collar coordinates1. 
  • Holes that were marked as "Not Drilled" or "Abandoned" were displayed in the "Analytics View" window even if the checkboxes to show these holes was turned off.
  • The "Save Recovery File" time interval in "Program Settings" > "General" dialog was not obeyed. 
  • Sometimes when using profile loading rules, continuous loading decks with the same product types were not merging. Editing loading decks and manually merging decks was also not working. This has been fixed. 
  • When using the text importer, the preview window would not stay focused on user's horizontal scroll position. After each new column field was mapped, the preview window would  'jump' to the left, this has been fixed. 
  • The "Test Rules" functionality in "Edit Loading Rules" was limiting the "Hole Types" and "Material Types" that could be tested. The maximum allowable is now 24.
  • Loading comments from BlastIQ™ Mobile were not displaying in SHOTPlus™ unless the hole also had "Drilled" or "Measured" data in the import. 
  • There was inconsistency in how the "Move/Copy Entities" functionality worked. 
  • The "Profile Logging" dialog was not scaling the X axis correctly in the hole trace graph, causing a single loaded trace to appear hard to distinguish.
  • "Monte Carlo"/"AVM" predictions were not working for plans that had holes marked as "Not Drilled", when it is should be allowed. 
  • An error was being thrown when importing data that has the "Depth to Water" value = the hole length, this scenario was not handled properly. 
  • The "Profile Tool" report was not printing all the necessary pages for each hole when the burden table was too long.
  • The "Drill Variance (elev)" view in "Analytics View" was not highlighting holes when the variance was exactly the value used for comparison.
  • "Wet Sides" rule was not applying properly in some situations

  Information

    1. Importing drill hole with toe centric data was never supported in the SHOTPlus™ system. In addition to fixing the bug, toe centric data import for drill holes is now supported.  
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