Patent ID: 7925474

Claim:
A method of transforming a representation of a mine having at least one pit, the method comprising: obtaining a block model of the pit in which material is divided into a plurality of blocks, the block model representing the mine; processing the blocks of the block model with a processor to define a plurality of clusters each comprising a plurality of blocks; forming, with the processor, a cone for each cluster propagating upwardly by precedence arcs extending from each cluster; and defining, with the processor, clumps of material from the intersection of the cones, the clumps comprising volumes of material not crossed by precedence arcs; generating, with the processor, an initial block sequence from the defined clumps, the block sequence representing a potential order of extraction of blocks from the mine; determining, with the processor, a value for time of extraction for each of the blocks of the block model from the block sequence; and reprocessing the blocks of the block model with the processor based on the determined time values to define a plurality of revised clusters and processing the revised clusters with the processor to define a plurality of clumps representing the mine.