What's New in MineSched 8.

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What's New in MineSched 8.0

For All Users
1. Scheduling Engine Performance
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Significant increase in the processing speed of the scheduling engine. This will greatly improve productivity for all MineSched users.
Surpac can now be used when MineSched is scheduling. Note that Surpac is still required for some processes that take place prior to
scheduling.

2. UI Performance
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Significant speed increase when switching between tabs. This is especially noticeable with large development data sets.
Significant improvement in 3D Canvas graphics performance. This is very noticeable with large development or underground production data
sets.

3. Production Activity Scheduling

The User Interface for scheduling of production ancillary activities has been completely redesigned.

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The Activities tab has been moved to the first tab in Setup Schedule.
In the Activities tab, the user creates and sequences the activities on a 2D Canvas.
A number of predefined activities such as Drilling and Blasting facilitate the creation of activities.
The Mining activity is precreated and will always exist.
Users who wish to schedule only the Mining activity can go directly to Setup Schedule: Locations.
Activity properties that are location specific are set up in Setup Schedule: Locations. The user has access to the 2D and 3D canvases to assist
with defining activity properties.
Different polygons or object sequences are supported for different activities within the same location, and the sequence for each activity can
be defined using the Graphical Sequencer.
Activity Resources and Activity Rates are defined in Setup Schedule: Production, in the same way as mining resources and mining rates.
Activity resource capacities and rates can now easily change over time using their dedicated data grids.
When a MineSched 7.1 scenario is opened in MineSched 8.0, activities defined in Setup Schedule: Activities in MineSched 7.1 are currently not
displayed in MineSched 8.0. Activities must be redefined in MineSched 8.0.

4. Animation Canvas Enhancements

A number of enhancements have been implemented in the Animation Canvas.

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Enhancements to the Animation Canvas include:

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Production and development display methods can be set to Individual, Add, Remove or None. These control how the period animation is
displayed.
A tooltip on the period slider makes it much easier to navigate to a specific period
Stockpiles can be animated
Ancillary activities can be animated

With these enhancements to the Animation Canvas plus the new MineSched Interactive Viewer, the old method of animating scheduling
graphical results within Surpac has been removed. Scheduling graphical results can still be created for manual viewing in Surpac.

5. MineSched Interactive Viewer

MineSched animations can be shared using a distributable, standalone interactive viewer that contains the functionality of the Animation
Canvas.

6. New data grids for Priorities

The definition of priorities in MineSched 8 has been redesigned. In MineSched 7.1, priorities were entered in four possible places in the UI:
development rates data grid, production rates data grid, production parameters data grid, and the ancillary activities UI. In MineSched 8,
priorities are entered in dedicated Priorities data grids. These are found in Setup Schedule: Precedences because priorities and precedences
are closely related in that they both control the mining sequence.

The new method of defining priorities gives the following advantages over the old methods:

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What's New in MineSched 8.0

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Priorities can be entered with the assistance of the 2D and 3D canvases, or with wildcards
Priorities can change over time without the user needing to know the resource rate at the time that the priority change takes place
Resources and resource rates are now easier to define because priorities do not need to be considered
Priorities are entered in one tab within the scheduling workflow, rather than four different tabs

7. Multiple levels of Priorities

In MineSched 7.1, users had a single priority level to work with. MineSched 8 introduces multiple levels of priorities. If headings or locations
can be grouped, this allows higher level priorities to specify the priorities of the groups, and lower level priorities to specify the priorities of
the individual heading or location types within the groups.
Because priorities are fundamental to controlling your development schedule, and your production schedule when not target scheduling, the
enhancements to priorities should greatly simplify setting up your schedule with full control over the mining sequence.

8. New Error Capturing

The error capturing system has been redesigned to provide a better user experience.

9. New demonstration data

The existing demonstration data sets have been upgraded with new MineSched 8.0 scenario files. In addition, one new data set has been
added below the cement folder which contains an example of surface haulage.

For Underground Users

1. Automatic Connection Enhancements
A data grid named Automatic Connections exposes all Automatic Connections to the user. This allows rules to be defined which control what
takes place at automatic connections in the heading design.

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The following four rules can now be specified:

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Adjustment

The adjustment length changes the position along the primary heading where the secondary heading becomes available.
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Opening Length

Another rule that is commonly followed at a development heading connection is that once the secondary heading becomes available, mining
must advance a certain distance along the secondary heading before mining can resume on the primary heading. The Opening Length field
sets this rule.
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Primary Delay

A third rule that can be applied at a development heading connection is that once the secondary heading becomes available, a fixed amount
of time must pass before mining can resume on the primary heading.
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Secondary Delay

A fourth rule that can be applied at a development heading connection is that once the secondary heading becomes available, a fixed
amount of time must pass before mining can start in the secondary heading.
These rules can be specified differently for each automatic connection. The Automatic Connections data grid interacts with the 3D Canvas,
allowing a rule to quickly be specified for all heading connections, or for specific headings that can be graphically selected.

2. Named Wildcards in Precedences

Setup Schedule: Precedences is where precedences can be graphically defined between headings that are not spatially connected, from
headings to mining locations, and between mining locations. In the real world there can be thousands of stopes requiring thousands of
precedences, and defining the precedences graphically may not be a practical option.
The concept of Named Wildcards has been developed to provide a solution to this. A Named Wildcard Builder assists with creating a
precedence expression using named wildcards. Named wildcards allow multiple precedences to be defined in a single row in the
Precedences data grid. To use named wildcards effectively, headings and locations must be named appropriately and consistently.

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Copyright 2011 MineSched Software International

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