4^th Surpac-User Meeting of Austria

The meeting took place at Januray 26th and 27th in Leoben, Austria.

The goals of the meeting were:

• provide newest information on the recent development of Surpac
• supporting information exchange between Surpac users
• provide an introduction in the capabilities and features of Surpac
• allowing clients to give their comments and whishes for future developments to the software vendor
• giving hints and support for special topics requested by the clients

The meeting adressed both current Surpac users and all persons interested in a application of a mining planning tool in their company in the future.

We are extremly proud that also experienced and competent representatives of Surpac-Minex have joined the meeting. This year this were Mr. Betran de Lange from the UK-office and Mr. Mike Berriman, who is manager of the R&D department of Surpac in Perth, Australia. Betran and Mike both presented speeches on Surpac topics and were also available for discussions and individual talks.

Program

Based on to the positive experiences of previous event this meeting was structured in two parts.

The first day (Thursday, January 26th, 2006) focused on general information about Surpac. These information provided the participants with an overview on the current capabilities of Surpac Vision and an outlook on future developments planned by Surpac. As usual the participants could use this unique possibility to put request on inprovements directly to those responsible for the development. Due to particular interest of several users a special focus was put on the software "SiroVision", which supports photogrammetry surveying of quarries and benches and covers the advantages of rapid surveying with the indepth-information of a 3D-picture.
The main issues of the program were:

• Presentation of Surpac-Mines and their products
• Presentation of the neweset developments and future strategies of the development (current version Surpac Vision 5.1 and aoutlook for the next version 5.2 which is expected to be released soon)
• Presentation of SiroVision
• Brieve Presentation of the activities of mine-it with a particular focus on enbedding and applying Surpac in the area of data management.

The second day (Friday, January 27th, 2006) was organized as a workshop, with practical application of Surpac. According to requests of our clients this workshop covered "typical" steps of a mine planning process, executed by means of a simple example. Particular topics of this course were data import, creating surfaces, open pit planning, volume calculations and deposit modelling. The goal of the workshop was to cover the essential functions of Surpac, but also to provide tips and tricks for the quick and efficient application of Surpac. Particular focus was put on aspects of "preparation" of the work (configuration of Surpac, preconditions on import data). as these aspects are particularily important for worry-free working..

In the evening of the first day (January 26th, 2004) we also organized an informal event ("Surpac evening") - with plenty of time for discussions on Surpac, mine planning and other topics.

During the whole meeting both the representatives of Surpac, Mr. de Lange and Mr. Berrman, as well as the staff of mine-it were available for individual talks and discussions.
Mr. de Lange is on the staff of the UK-office of Surpac, and Mr. Berrman is manager of the R&D department of Surpac in Perth, Australia.