Patent ID: 8548609

Claim:
A method for designing a drilling pattern for rock cavity excavation, in which the drilling pattern determines for a round to be drilled in a face of the rock cavity at least the locations and directional angles of drill holes in a coordinate system of the drilling pattern and the lengths of the drill holes, and which method comprises: creating the drilling pattern with the assistance of a computer using a design program, determining a navigation plane of the drilling pattern, determining starting points of holes to be drilled in the navigation plane, determining first end points of the holes to be drilled, the first end points of all holes in the drilling pattern being in a common plane with a planar portion of a bottom of the round, feeding to the design program a desired face profile representing the shape of the face in the round to be drilled, the desired face profile including a planar portion and a non-planar portion, and modifying the drilling pattern by transferring at least some of the first end points of the holes to second end points located on the non-planar portion of the desired face profile, and wherein the second end points are spaced from the common plane containing the non-transferred first end points, and wherein drill holes of different lengths in the modified drilling pattern produce the shape of the desired face profile.