ABSTRACT
Computers play an important role in most phases of the mining business today. Their increasing use in mine planning and design has meant that the engineers and planners can spend more time evaluating alternative designs and asking what if types of questions rather than in performing tedious hand calculations and drawing and redrawing the various maps by hand. There are a number of different mine design software packages commercially available and currently being used by both mining companies and mining universities throughout the world. Each package differs rather significantly from the next. Although becoming more user-friendly over time, all require a rather large time commitment to become proficient in their use. In the surface mine design courses taught at most universities, the total time spent in the classroom and laboratory is quite limited. Within this time frame both the fundamentals and the applications must be covered. To accomplish this demonstration of the principles within the available time, a special, very user-friendly commercial quality software package called CSMine has been developed. To demonstrate the use of the package, a drill hole data set and the topography maps for the Arizona Copper property have been included. The Arizona Copper property is described in Chapter 17.
