mineCAD is designed to bridge the gap between drafting CAD systems and detailed, 3D mining design packages.
 
For decades, engineers, rock mechanics, surveyors, and geologists have battled with mining software. While the majority of mining packages are excellent at attribute handling and 3D design, they lack in basic drafting tools and their printing capabilities are consistently poor. CAD packages, such as AutoCAD and MicroStation®, have the drafting and printing tools but lack in their ability to design in 3D and manage data. mineCAD has all the "nice to have" drafting and printing tools of the popular CAD packages together with advanced attribute and data handling, and excellent 3D design functionality.
 
With its familiar Microsoft® Office look-and-feel, mineCAD is a user-friendly interface that is very easy to use. To maximize productivity, you can fully customize mineCAD’s toolbars and shortcut keys.

Integration
mineCAD integrates with both your current CAD system and your mining software, and allows simple drag-and-drop of data into its Design Window (Model Space). With a few clicks, your data can be displayed inside a (Paper Space) Viewport and printed. If you change the original data, these changes can easily be “refreshed”. This process automatically updates the Viewport, which you can then print. Show Me...
 
mineCAD supports ODBC drivers to read and write from databases, and reads files natively in the following formats: VULCAN, Surpac, Mine2-4D, AutoCAD, MicroStation®, DXF, DWF, EMF, WMF, Gemcom, and Datamine. To enable efficient updating of title block and block information on plots, mineCAD uses Intellitext, a process which uses user-defined tags to automatically generate text.

Mining Functionality
Specifically designed for Mining Engineers, mineCAD includes mine design tools such as Ramp and Pit design, Drift walls and solids, X-Section, and fast Driving Layout and plot creation. Also included are View plane clipping and View Locking, to enable rotation of clipped design entities and creation of true sections through solids by slicing along a polyline. You can also slice and hull solids that fall within the view.
 
Entities such as circle, ellipse, polyline, solids, scale bars, grids, and north arrows, as well as CAD snapping modes (center, end, node, tangent, and so on) are all provided by mineCAD. Other functionality includes trimming, polyhatching, engineering layout tools, and mining annotation tools for Grade Change Markers, Safety Bays (manual and automatic), Distance/Dip/Azimuth, Polyline attributes, Coordinates, and Drillhole data.
 
mineCAD also incorporates advanced block handling, which allows you to create your own symbols and place them anywhere in the drawing. mineCAD comes preinstalled with many blocks of standard mining symbols, as well as popular equipment types to add that extra little something to your drawings.

Solids Modeling
mineCAD has a number of commands that you can use to work with solids. You can easily draw a number of solids, as well as create them by linking polylines. The options for the solid drawing commands are set by you and saved in your system. You can also use Boolean operations to combine solids, as well as explode existing solids to break them into their component triangles.

Block Model Handling
The mineCAD block model is one of the most advanced in the mining industry, incorporating all the functionality present in VULCAN, Surpac, Gemcom and Datamine without the limitations of these systems. You can also import block models from other block model systems.
 
You can view block models in mineCAD using the orbit viewing facility, which enables you to view entities in 3D and rotate them while viewing them.
 
mineCAD provides a simple means of interrogating block models against your created solids to generate tonnage and grade profiles. You can also use mineCAD to slice the block model using the current view and generate polyline entities.

Drillhole Handling
Within mineCAD, drillholes can be imported from a variety of generic data sources.
 
To add drillhole data to a mineCAD document, simply drag-and-drop the data into the Design Window. Using mineCAD’s commands, you can easily format and add annotation to the drillhole data.
 
You can use mineCAD to create drillhole warnings or to plan maps of ring designs.

Dynamic Objects
Never again will you need to draw a coordinate grid, north arrow, or scale bar. These dynamic objects are automatically updated based on the properties of the drawing; for example, North Arrows are updated based on the rotation, and scale bars on the scale.

Attribute Handling
All drawing entities can have custom defined attributes. You can use these attributes for reporting and filtering. In mineCAD, you can manipulate attributes to report from your design. To reduce querying of entities, mineCAD generates Tool Tips from design attributes. mineCAD also provides legend capabilities and the ability to color entities based on their attributes, such as Grade or Level.

Printing with Ease
mineCAD uses WYSIWYG Windows® printer drivers for plotting at any scale. Model Space and Paper Space are implemented to allow multiple user-defined Viewports to be placed on the same plot. With its advanced solid rendering (including lighting) of designs, which can be printed at scale, mineCAD provides all the printing capabilities that you need.

Structured Layout
mineCAD provides superior drawing hierarchy, with combined Advanced Layer Control and Object-oriented infrastructure, allowing full access, editing, and manipulation of drawing entities at all levels. Using intelligent mapping of data, you can Refresh from the original datasource and Write Back into the mineCAD Layer Control. To prevent unauthorized access, mineCAD includes user access and permissions to specific layers.

Effective Help System
An integral part of the mineCAD software is its comprehensive online Help file, which is maintained regularly to ensure it is kept up-to-date. The Help file also contains a list of the latest software enhancements with links to their detailed descriptions.

Training
To learn more about mineCAD, contact GijimaAst and ask for information on the available training courses.

Inbuilt Scripting Engine
mineCAD uses Visual Basic as its application scripting language and provides inbuilt VB IDE, including popup help.
 
With its advanced object model, development of plugins is easy and user-friendly. At any time and as required, customized dialogs can be added to the system.

Plot Management
mineCAD includes Plot Management with drawing check-in and check-out, as well as roll back and history, which greatly improves auditability and accountability in your plotting and signoff process.

Communication
mineCAD comes with a Viewer version, which allows plots to be sent to, and viewed by, non-licensed users reducing the costs for your organization.
 
You can also place hyperlinks onto entities, so that external documents or websites can be opened when the entity is clicked.

New Functionality
New functionality is continuously added using a web-based voting system, which is available to registered users on the mineCAD website.
 
Using mineWebUpdate, the latest releases of the product together with any fixes that may be required, are provided over the Web.