Deswik.CAD Essentials

This course introduces Deswik.CAD, the geometry engine at the centre of the Deswik mine planning suite, in the context of an open pit metals operation. You'll start by getting oriented in the 3D workspace, navigating, clipping to a working area, and bringing a complex pit dataset under control with layers, filters, and saved layer states. From there you'll work through drawing and editing design geometry with the precision that real design work demands, using object snaps, typed coordinates, and drawing constraints rather than clicking by eye. The course then moves into what makes Deswik.CAD a mining tool rather than a drafting package: attaching data to geometry through attributes, driving display and error detection through legends, and using both to select and report across large datasets. You'll build triangulated surfaces from points and strings, validate them, and use them for draping and volume comparison. You'll then build closed solids from strings and sections, validate them properly, and combine them using boolean operations. The course closes by connecting geometry to numbers, loading a block model, reserving solids against it to produce tonnes and grade, sanity-checking the result, and getting work out through sections, scaled plots, and exports. Throughout, the emphasis is on the habits that make design work trustworthy: naming conventions, consistent attributes, and validation before reporting.