Geological Database in Surpac

This course takes you through the geological database workflow in Surpac, from setting up a database through to preparing drillhole data for resource estimation. It builds on the Introduction to Surpac course and assumes you are already comfortable with the basic interface, layers, and string files. You'll begin with the concepts that underpin every drillhole database — the collar and survey tables that locate each hole in space, and the optional tables that carry lithology, assays, and other interval data. From there you'll create digital terrain models using both graphics-based and file-based methods, including surfaces built from spot heights, from breaklines combined with spot heights, and on a plane of best fit. You'll then create a new Surpac geological database, connect to existing databases, map tables between them, and import drillhole data from text files. With data in place, the course moves into visualisation and interrogation. You'll display drillholes in 3D, apply styles, render them as cylinders, and plot lithology codes, assay values, and colour-filled bar graphs of grade down each hole. You'll identify and graphically edit individual drillholes, generate drillhole sections, build viewing planes that combine drillholes with DTMs and solid models, and step through regular sections to digitise ore outlines, flag interval tables, and determine the grade of a digitised segment. The course then covers producing section plots for reporting, including simple section plots, plots with a plan strip, oblique sections, multiple section plots with title blocks, and sectional fence diagrams. It closes with the data preparation steps that sit directly ahead of estimation: compositing by elevation, downhole, constrained by an intercept table, and graphically; defining and extracting data by domain; and basic statistical analysis using histograms, including recognising bimodal distributions and identifying and removing outliers.