User's Guide and Tutorials Leapfrog PDF

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Working with Projects Page 1 of 3
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials >
Working with Projects
Overview
The following topics are covered in this tutorial:
• How to create a new project
• How to delete a project
• How to open an existing project
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Working with Projects >
Creating a New Tutorial Project

1. Go to the location where Leapfrog is installed, and find the tutorials folder. The default
location is C:\Program Files\ARANZ Geo\Leapfrog 2.4\tutorials
2. Copy the tutorials folder to your My Documents folder.
3. Start Leapfrog and click the New button to create a new project. Type the name
Tutorial in the New project name box. This will create a new folder Tutorial and a project
file Tutorial.lfp under this folder
4. Click on the OK button to proceed. This will create a new project Tutorial and its associated project
tree.
file://C:\TEMP\~hh72E0.htm 04-07-2011
Once the project has been created, several folders are generated in the project tree, as seen above. The
folders are:
• Drillhole Data. Contains imported drillhole data (collar, survey and Interval tables folder for
assay/lithology).
• Domains. Defines spatial domains.
• Numeric Data. Contains grade and other gradient data.
• Boundaries. Contains imported boundary data, such as faults and stratigraphic boundaries, and imported
lithology data, following numerical conversion.
• Topography. Contains imported topography data.
• Meshes. Contains imported meshes created in other mining software packages.
• Polylines. Contains polylines created in Leapfrog and imported from other software packages.
• Structural Data. Contains dip and dip azimuth data that represent structural measurements, polarity and
category data.
• Structural Trends. Contains localised structural trends.
• Bounding Boxes. Contains data extent bounding boxes.
• Scenes. Contains saved scenes, which can be restored by dragging and dropping them into the scene
window.
• Images and Slices. Contains imported images and cross sections for texture mapping.
Public domain "Marvin" database is a fictitious exploration drillhole dataset provided courtesy of Mr Norm
Hanson and Geological Engineering students at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.
Deleting a Project
To delete the current project, choose Project > Delete from the menu. You will be asked to confirm your
choice.
Opening an Existing Project
Open a project by:
• Clicking the button on the project toolbar

• Selecting Project > Open
• Selecting a project from the list of recently opened projects in the Project menu:
If the button is clicked or Project > Open is selected you will be presented with the Open Project
window. The Open Project window will display all project files found under the Look in folder. If the tutorial
project is not displayed in the list, click the Browse button to set the Look in folder to the one containing the
tutorial project.
If a project is already loaded, it is automatically closed when you open another

project.
If the server has any processes currently running, closing a project will take effect
after those processes are finished.
Drillhole Data Import Tutorial Page 1 of 38
Drillhole Data Import Tutorial
Overview
There are two ways to import drillhole data into Leapfrog. The first way is covered in this tutorial. The second
way to to import drillhole data directly from an acQuire database.
• How the drillhole data files are structured
• How to import drillhole data into a project
• How to fix errors and tidy up the data sets
• How to view properties of the imported drillhole data
• How to display the imported drillhole data
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Drillhole Data Import Tutorial >
Drillhole Data Format
Table Types and Column Data Types

Leapfrog works directly with drillhole table data, similar to GMP products. Three types of tables are required.
1. Collar table: Defines where the drillhole starts from. You will need to provide values for hole ID, east (X),
north (Y) and elevation (Z) to represent the geographical location of the point where a drillhole begins.
2. Survey table: Defines the orientation of the drillholes at given depths. You will need to provide values for hole
ID, depth, dip and azimuth.
The collar and survey tables define the physical 3D shape of drillholes.
3. Interval table(s): Contains grade or lithology data for drillhole samples. You will need to provide values for
hole ID, start depth and end depth and 1 or more columns of measurements. Measurements can include
grade, lithology, date or any required numeric or textual values.
Leapfrog supports the following column data types:
Column Type Description Comments
Assay Positive numeric assay values Leapfrog checks for negative or textual values and allows the
user to assign meanings to these values. Interval tables only.
Lithology Special Category column for lithology data Values can be grouped for easy querying. Can be displayed as
colours in the scene. Interval tables only.
Category Text data representing categories, e.g. Values can be grouped for easy querying. Can be displayed as
company, geologist, mineralization colours in the scene.
Numeric Numeric values No checking.
Text Text data that is not categorical, e.g. No checking. Cannot be displayed as colours in the scene.
comments
Date Date data Most date or timestamp formats supported for import. Only
date part is stored.
Importing Drillhole Data
Import Drillholes
1. In this tutorial, we import the Marvin tutorial data, located in the Leapfrog tutorial directory.
file://C:\TEMP\~hh83A1.htm 04-07-2011
2. To import drillhole data, right-click on the Drillhole Data folder in the project tree and select Import
Drillholes. Alternatively, you can select Project > Import > Drillholes from the main menu.
3. Click on the Browse button associated with the Collar file to import a collar data file. Navigate to the
tutorials\Marvin\drilling\M folder and select M-collars.DAT.
Leapfrog will search for associated Survey and Interval Tables (assay or lithography data) files. If any are
found, they will be automatically entered in the window.
If you have an external file that contains the meanings of Special Assay Values, you can specify the location
of the file, such that those values will be automatically interpreted during the import. For details, please refer to
Special Assay Values in the Reference Manual. You can also automatically log all the errors discovered during
the drillhole data import process. If required, specify the log file name in the Log Errors To field.
4. Once the data tables are selected, click Import, and the next window looks like:
5. The collar table should consist of five essential columns, which are Hole Id, East (X), North (Y), Elev (Z),
and Max Depth. Leapfrog will try to match corresponding columns based on the header row in the file. In this
case, for example, a column named "RL" is recognized as "Elev". You will need to manually assign columns
if the automatic matching does not find all the required columns.
At the bottom-right corner, you can also specify a column to be used for a Unique Row ID. If specified,
Leapfrog will use this column to match rows when appending data, appending columns or reloading tables.
Specifying a Unique Row ID is optional.
6. When you wish to import a column of date or time type, Leapfrog automatically detects the format. Click on
Date and Time Formats to display details of the detected format. Modify the format if necessary.
Almost any date format can be understood by Leapfrog through the specification of a custom format. Details
on how to specify a date and time-stamp format is given in Date and Time Formats topic in the Reference
Manual.
If you are satisfied with the assigned column names, click Next to proceed to importing the survey table.
7. We wish the third column with heading azim_amg to be the Azimuth column, while Leapfrog matched the
fourth column with Azimuth. You can manually change the column headers by clicking on the header of the
third column and select Azimuth in the menu. Again, click Next when satisfied to proceed to importing
interval measurement data.
8. We will import Cu and Au grade data. Click on the column header where it says Not Imported and has the
Cu value in the row below. Select "cu" Assay from the menu to specify a column type of Assay, and
likewise for Au.
Alternatively, you can set the Cu and Au columns in the Column Summary pane on the right. You can
conveniently assign multiple columns (if they are of the same type) at once. Hold down Shift or Ctrl key
while you select multiple items to be imported. Release Shift or Ctrl key and right-click to see the drop-
down list of data types to select the appropriate data type.
You can also choose to Import All Columns by clicking on the button at the bottom-right corner. Leapfrog
assigns appropriate data types for each column, chosen from Numeric, Category, and Date. The user will need
to reassign any Assay, Lithology or Text (comment) columns manually.
Assay data can be imported as Assay data type or as Numeric data type. However,
when you use the Assay data type, Leapfrog can handle non-numeric and negative
values in a more sophisticated manner.
Columns not imported at this stage can be added later by the "Import Column" function,
explained in the Import Column topic of the Reference manual.
9. Finally, we import rocktype and zone as "Lithology" and "Category" respectively. Then finalise the import
selection by clicking Finish.
10.If required, you can change the Table Name as shown by a red box in the figure below. Note that changing
the table name is only allowed for interval measurement tables.
The selected data will be imported and will appear under Drillhole Data.
Append Drillholes
If the drillhole data is stored in multiple files, you can import other files into the current project and add them to
the existing database.
1. Right-click on the Drillhole Data in the project tree and select Append Drillholes.
2. Let us import more drillhole data stored in the subdirectory Mar.
3. We import the files in Mar directory and append them to the current tables.
4. The rest is similar to the initial data importing procedure. As long as the file to be appended maintains the
same column names and the same data type, all earlier settings will be automatically applied; all you need to
do is press the Next button.
Now all the drillhole data we need for the following tutorials have been imported into Leapfrog.
Table Dialog
Your project will now have three tables. Double-click on m_assays to see the contents of the table. This will
display the Table dialog as shown below.
Brief instruction is given in the dialog. You can use the Query entry box and the button to filter the data (see
the Query Filter dialog for more details). When the Query entry box is blank, it will display the entire table.
Press Enter or click the Apply button to proceed.
Table values may be edited in the window by double-clicking on a cell and then editing the value.
Now type mar into the Query entry box and press Enter. A single-word query is a short-cut for finding holeids
starting with the given value; mar in this instance. (Queries are NOT case sensitive). All the rows from the MAR
drilling program are now displayed.
To save this query for later use, click the Save As button in the top right corner and enter the name MAR
drilling.
Previously saved queries can be recalled by clicking on the menu button as shown below.
When a filter is created, it appears in the tree.
Queries can also be used for selecting what is shown in the scene. See the Display Drillhole Data topic for
details.
A filter can be deleted by right-clicking and selecting Delete. (Do not delete this filter as it will be used later in
the tutorial.)
Extra Columns
The heading for the first two columns are Ignored and Master. You can adjust the column width to see the
entire heading, if required. These columns are followed by a column called id, and then the imported data
columns follow.
If the Ignored column is ticked, then that row is completely ignored by Leapfrog, as if it had been deleted. This
is useful for suppressing erroneous data from being processed. If a hole in the collar table is ignored then all
other data associated with that hole (e.g. surveys and interval measurements) is also ignored.
Interval tables (such as the one shown above) will also have a Master column. If the Master column is ticked
for a row then any interval (in the same table and hole) that overlaps the ticked row is ignored. Master intervals
may be specified using a query by clicking the Master Segments button. See the Case Studies: Fixing Errors
topic for details.
Note: The id column is the internal row identifier (primary key) used by Leapfrog and cannot be edited.
Fixing Errors
Drillhole data often contains errors. Unlike some other applications, rows containing errors are still imported,
allowing correction of errors from within Leapfrog. Rows containing errors are excluded from all processing that
uses the table, including viewing in the scene. For example, if the collar position for holeid 'M001' contained
NULL for the x-coordinate, then it will not show in the scene, as the valid collar position of the hole is not
known. For the same reason, desurveying or compositing processing will not use any surveys or measurement
data associated with this hole.
1. If you require a list of errors for your system administrator, export them before fixing them.
2. Leapfrog validates the table data after the drillhole data has been imported. If a table contains conflicts or
errors, the icon of the table in the project tree will be changed to a red X, as shown:
The drillhole data used for the tutorial is intentionally designed not to contain an error. In real life, it is unlikely
that your data is free from some need for error correction.
The following case studies were specifically designed to demonstrate the error correction mechanism provided
by Leapfrog. You may skip the case studies and use it as a reference when you have trouble with importing
your own drillhole data.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Drillhole Data Import Tutorial > Fixing Errors >
Case Studies: Fixing Errors

When you have importing errors, make sure you imported all necessary files. Sometimes, you may have collar
or survey data spread across several files and you might have just forgotten to import one of them.
Most errors can be easily fixed in the Database Errors window. Alternatively, you can export a list of errors and
use that to edit the data externally and then reload them into Leapfrog.
To gain more experience in error fixing, let us process another set of drillhole data that was deliberately
designed to have various types of errors.
Start a new project called Tutorial_Error and import data located in
tutorials\Marvin\drilling\Error_Fix. Import them following the exactly same steps described in Drillhole
Data Import Tutorial.
Right-click on a table with an error, and select Fix Errors.
This brings up the Database Errors window:
Error Fixing Techniques

Ignore
The first column in each table is the Ignore column (you can drag the column wider to see the entire label).
Ticking the ignore column for a row causes Leapfrog to omit it from all processing, as if it had been deleted.
Expand the line of Duplicate HoleID to see the details. Two panes in the window titled Current Error and
Current Conflict highlight conflicting entries. In this example, lines with id 15 and 16 have the same holeID,
and indeed, they are both 'M015'. One entry can be discarded.
Let us discard id 16 here (either one will do). In the Current Error or Current Conflict pane, click on the tick
box in first column with header "Ig(nored)".
After clicking the Close button, Leapfrog will start running processes and updating the database. If you open up
the window again, you will notice the Duplicate HoleID is no longer reported. However, we recommend that
you fix as many errors at once before clicking Close. Otherwise, you will have to repeatedly open and close the
window until all errors are taken care of.
Exercise:
1. Fix HoleID not in collar table error. (Hint: holeID m016 does not exist in the collar table, and row 2201,
2202, 2203 and 2204 can be discarded. You can select multiple entries by holding down Shift or Ctrl key).
Modify
You can double click on any cell to edit its contents (except the id column). Alternatively, if the cell has the
focus, use the space bar to start editing. Changes made in this way are saved to the database immediately.
Expand the line of From depth >= to depth to see the details. The entry that caused this error is highlighted in
the Current Error pane. As suggested by the error message, the from and to values of line id 2198 are
incorrect. Comparing with the adjacent segments, it seems clear that swapping from and to will fix the problem.
Click on the cell containing the wrong from value and type in 8.5. Similarly, type in 22.5 to fix the wrong to
value.
Click the Close button to see if this error is fixed.
You don't need to click on Close everytime you make a change. You can instead continue
fixing other errors.
Fix Collar Maxdepths

If there is a segment located beyond the maxdepth defined in the collar table, Collar maxdepth exceeded is
reported.
There are five such occasions in the example. Simply click on Fix Collar Maxdepths button, which corrects all
the incidents having this particular type of error.
Add Special Assay Value

Some of our clients use special codes in their data table, for example -666, -888 etc. Often, such a code carries
special meaning, such as:
1. The grade value is below detection limit.
2. The core is lost.
3. The segment is not sampled.
If the non-numeric grade value corresponds to one of the above, you can use Add Special Assay Value button
to specify the meaning of it.
The first two incidents of Invalid Assay Value can be fixed with this function. The assay values causing errors
are "below", supposedly meaning "Below Detection". Click on the Add Special Assay Values button.
This brings up the Add Special Value window.Choose Below Detection and click Close.
More conventional notation such as "<0.02" is often used to indicate "below detection". Leapfrog understands
some of widely used special assay values and automatically associates them with their meanings. In fact, the
drillhole data M-Assays.dat contains many occurrences of "<0.02" and "<0.01", but they are automatically
registered as "below detection" during the import process.
Note that the special assay value needs to be individually registered for each column. In this case, the value
'below' is found in both cu and Au columns. While 'below' for cu has been registered, the meaning of 'below' for
Au still needs to be defined.
Replace All
If you wish to replace all the occurrences of a certain value with something else, you can use Replace All
button.
Go to the third case under the Invalid Assay Value error, and find that this entry has Au grade of -999. Here,
let us assume that this special code -999 also means below detection, so we can replace it with <0.02.
Click on the Replace All button.
This brings up the Replace All window. Type in 0.02 in the window and click OK.
Master Segments
If there are duplicates or overlapping segments, you may ignore all except one. This might also involve
modifying the variable from or to. While those to be ignored can be individually marked ignored, if there are
considerable number of such incidents to deal with, individual marking can be very cumbersome.
Expand Overlapping Segments and examine the overlapping segments.
First, notice that id 2194 and 2195 are exact duplicates. Let us dispose of id 2195 by ticking Ignored.
Next, you may notice that holeid m015 has been sampled twice, where id 2191~2194 and id 2196~2200 are
the first and second set of samples respectively.
Let us assume we want to keep the first sample, and dispose of the second sample. Click on the Master
Segments button.
This brings up the Master Samples window.

If you wish a segment to be discarded, you can individually tick in the Ignored column, and explicitly tick in the
Master column otherwise.
Here, we already have a pattern. id 2191~2194 will be kept (chosen to be Master). In such a case, you can
feed a simple query into the Set Master Segments field.
Type in id >= 2191 AND id <= 2194 in this field and click on the Select button. Notice that the Master
column of id 2191~2194 are ticked. Click OK. If you require more advanced query, click on the ... button.
This closes the Master Samples window, and you are back to the Database Errors window.
Notice that id 2196~2200 are not explicitly marked Ignored. This is OK. As you designated id 2191~2194 as
master segments, all other overlapping segments will be automatically ignored.
Queries entered in the Master Segments window will only select rows listed in the
window. The query 'id <= 2194' is entirely equivalent as all the duplicate samples
have an id >= 2196.
Now all the errors have been fixed, click Close to exit the error fixing window, and click the Run All button.
Notice that the imported drillhole data is now free from any errors.
Export
Any changes to the database through the table window or error corrections only affect the database, not the
original data file.
In case you wish to keep the changes in the form of data file, you may export the database to files. Right-click
on Drillhole Data in the Project tree, and select Export.
This brings up the Export Drillhole Data dialog. You can specify the prefix that is added to the file names.
Type fix in the Base file name field. To incorporate the error fixes, select Valid rows only.
Note that the exported file will not include the meaning of the special assay values.
Table Properties
You can access the low-level details of the drillhole data table by right-clicking on the name of the table and
selecting Properties in the context menu. Alternatively, you can press Alt+Enter to open the Properties
dialog.
The Properties dialog of each type of drillhole tables commonly offers General, Processing, Dependencies
and Errors tabs.
Survey and Interval tables (such as assay and lithology) also have a Histogram tab.
• The General tab shows the data structure of the table.
• The Processing tab shows the current status of the processing (queued to process, processing, finished
etc), and the location of the data file that was imported to construct the table.
• The Dependencies tab shows how the columns in the table relate to other tables.
• The Errors tab gives descriptions on the errors that have occurred while processing the table.
• The Histogram tab gives the statistical characteristics of the imported data. In this dialog, the user may
select the column for which a histogram will be generated. For example, the histogram for Au is generated as
shown in the following screenshot.
For details regarding the histogram, see the Histogram topic in the Reference Manual.
If you select a column that contains non-numeric values, such as zone, the graphical histogram will not be
shown. Instead, some statistical information including the frequency of each category and mean grade of assay
data is displayed. For example, the zone MX accounts for 46.36% of total length, contains average of 0.78 cu
and 0.58 Au. In contrast, the zone OX contains relatively low cu and Au mean grade. It suggests that exploring
the zone OX is not very productive.
Display Drillhole Data

Let us display the imported drillhole data. (If you have done Case Studies: Fixing Errors, go back to the eariler
Tutorial project).
Right-click on m_assays in the project tree and select View.
Alternativey, m_assays can be dragged from the project tree and dropped into the scene window. Whichever
method is used, the m_assays table will be displayed as shown:
Manipulating the view is described in 3D Navigation and Display Settings of the Model.
In the shape list, the first drop-down menu in the m_assays row shows what column is currently being
displayed. Other columns in the table, such as holeid, cu, rocktype and zone, can be selected from the menu.
For example, let us select rocktype:
The second drop-down menu lists the different colourings that can be applied to the selected column. Numeric
columns are coloured by colour-maps and Category columns are coloured by partitions. Initially, a different
colour is assigned to each drillhole. To learn which rocktype each colour represents, select Edit Partitions
from the second drop-down menu.
This brings up the Edit holeid Colours dialog as shown below. You may use the tick box associated to each
colour code to turn on/off the view of specific drillhole. The Scene window is automatically updated when you
tick or untick the box, which helps to locate a specific drillhole. Click on the colour swatches and change the
default colours similar to below.
Now display the collar table by dragging this table into the scene. The holeid is shown next to each collar point
(as shown below). It can be turned on and off by clicking on the icon.
New Query Filter

Query filters can be used to control which intervals or holes are to be displayed in the scene. We'll use the
MAR drilling query created in the Table Dialog topic.
Select MAR drilling from the Query filter list in the bottom right corner of the window, as shown below:
If you can't find MAR drilling, your display is currently set to the collar table. Select m_assays in the shape list.
When m_assays is highlighted, your display is set to m_assays table, and you should be able to find MAR
drilling in the Query filter.
When the filter is applied, only the drillholes whose name start with "MAR" will be displayed as shown below.
The MAR drilling query was created on the m_assays interval table, which means we cannot apply it to the
collar points (or any other table). This explains why the collar names such as "M010" and "M011" are still
shown when the MAR drilling filter was applied.
We can define a query filter for the collar table. Unlike the filter created for the interval table, queries defined on
the collar table will affect interval tables too.
Right-click on the collar table in the project tree and select New Query Filter. Type mar in the Query entry
box and MAR collars for the name, as shown below, and click OK.
This creates a filter in the tree:
Now select MAR collar for the Query filter for both m_assay and collar tables in the shape list.
Turn off the drillhole trace lines by clicking the button in the m_assays row of the shape list. The result
should be similar to the following screenshot.
See the Query Filters topic for more information on creating queries.
New Interval Selection

When a small portion of drillhole needs to be collected for further processing, users have a range of options to
consider, which includes:
• Composite Region
• Composite Assays
as well as the New Query Filter described in an earlier tutorial.
These selection tools take a number of parameters and use them as the selection criteria to automatically
collect the data. When the required parameters are easy to determine, these selection tools are best suited to
process a large data.
When you wish to select a small portion of intervals or you don't have suitable parameters to utilise one of
automated selection tools above, the New Interval Selection tool will be a great alternative. With this selection
tool, you can select intervals easily from the scene window.
To illustrate the use of this tool, let us consider the following scene, where m_assays (rocktype column) and
collar tables are currently displayed.
Suppose you wish to select Avt intervals (green) in the drillholes M010~M014 and MAR028 as shown as the
following:
You can certainly create a query filter similar to below, but it seems rather tedious to build such a query.
Instead, you can achieve the same result with the New Interval Selection tool.
Selecting Intervals
Right-click on m_assays and select New Interval Selection.
Specify the name for your interval selection in the pop up dialog, and click Create.
When the interval selection table has been created, it appears under m_assays in the project tree and the
display is updated with the new selection.. The selection toolbar is associated with an individual selection table,
indicating that the toolbar currently shown is linked to the m_assays selection. The toolbar can be toggled on
and off by the Edit ( ) icon of the m_assays selection entry located in the Shape List.
Click on the Add to selection ( ) button to start collecting intervals. The mouse cursor turns to ,
meaning that you are collecting intervals for Subset 1. The colour of the cursor is dependent on the subset,
whose colour is randomly assigned upon creation. You can customise this colour, which will be discussed
shortly.
Click the left mouse button and drag the mouse. Release the button when this one stroke has covered most of
the wanted AvT intervals.

This action selects intervals lying on the line between the two points of the mouse click and release. Those
selected intervals are highlighted in the subset colour, as shown in the following screenshot, where most of the
wanted AvT intervals have been selected. Note that the interval in this context is a homogeneously coloured
segment. Only one interval is selected from each drillhole at a time.
The m_assay selection ( ) is marked with "*" indicating that some updates have been made to this interval
selection table.
Click on Save ( ) button in the selection toolbar to store the current selected intervals.
There are two more short Avt intervals that have not been selected (in M011 and M012). Select each interval
using separate strokes.
Remove from selection ( ) is used to remove an interval from the current subset. The mouse cursor looks
like in this mode. The same mouse stroke technique as the Add to selection operation is applied.
Undo( ) and Redo ( ) buttons are also available for correcting mistakes.
When all the wanted intervals have been selected, save the result ( button) and display the
m_assays_selection ( ) table. Turn off m_assays table. The scene should look similar to:
Adding Intervals to a Separate Subset

Suppose you wish to select more intervals, but keep this new group as a separate subset.
To do so, you first need to create a new subset, a container where new intervals will be added to. Click on the
subset field of the m_assays selection entry.
This opens the Subsets dialogue, which lists all the subsets.
Click on the New button which creates Subset 2 and automatically allocates a new colour. You can change the
colour by clicking on the colour swatch.
The Edit ( ) icon for Subset 2 is shown active. Notice that the same icon for Subset 1 has been grayed out.
This means that the current "editable" subset is Subset 2 and intervals that you select will be added to Subset
2. You can switch between different subsets by toggling on the Edit ( ) icon for each subset.
Click on the Add to selection ( ) button, and you are ready to collect intervals for Subset 2. The subset you
are currently editing is easily recognised from the colour and the text of the mouse cursor, which looks like
(Depending your Windows system-wide font setting, some characters may not be showing
properly).
Advanced Interval Selection

Display the Au column of the m_assays table and try selecting some intervals.
This adds a very short interval from each drillhole, as shown below:
This explains the behaviour of the interval selection tool. As explained above, an interval is a homogeneously
coloured segment. Since the colourmap of Au is rather non-discrete, very short intervals happen to be lying on
the mouse stroke. Examine the colour of the intervals adjacent to the selected ones, and notice that their
colours are different from that of the selected.
It is apparent that the length of each selected interval is dependent on the current colourmap. Altering the
colourmap settings may be often required to take advantage of the New Interval Selection tool. This technique
is covered in Data Viewing Tutorial > Basic Display Techniques >Altering the colourmap settings, but we briefly
show some steps directly related.
Now, the intervals whose Au grade is above 0.6 are represented as red and below 0.6 are shown in blue
colour. The originally selected intervals are in red, and the some portions of segments adjacent to them are
also shown in red.
Now select more intervals underneath the selected intervals by a mouse stroke.
Notice that the original selected intervals extend only downwards, but not upwards. This is because the colour
of the original selected intervals is "red" plus the colour of Subset 2 overlay, whereas the intervals immediately
above and below are plain red. Then the "homogeneously coloured" segments lying on the mouse stroke only
include those intervals newly added. When a new interval is attached to an existing selected interval, it forms a
single "concatenated" interval.
Select the Remove from selection ( ) and delete one of the selected intervals using a mouse stroke. If this
is a single interval, the whole interval will be deleted. If this is still regarded as a two separate adjacent
intervals, only a portion of it will be deleted.
As shown below, the whole interval has been deleted, meaning that the new interval was concatenated to the
original one and formed a single interval.
In summary, the New Interval Selection tool augmented by the colourmap altering technique can be a
powerful alternative to more general automated selection tools such as Composite Region, Composite Assays
and New Query Filter.
Point Data Import/Extraction Tutorial Page 1 of 9
Point Data Import/Extraction Tutorial
Overview
• How to extract assay data from the pre-loaded drillhole data
• How to import assay data into a project
• How to use the import dialog box and selecting data from a multi-column assay dataset
• How font types are used to identify processing stages of data
• How to save the project once data is imported into Leapfrog
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Drillhole Data Import tutorial. The

Tutorial project must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this
tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Point Data Import/Extraction Tutorial >
Option 1: Extract from Drillhole Data

In Leapfrog, point data can be extracted from the imported drillhole data.
Right-click on m_assays under the Drillhole data in the Project tree and select Extract Points >
Assay Points.
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This brings up the Extract Assay Points dialog. All numeric columns are pre-selected. Click OK to
proceed. We skip the Background Regions tab here. See Extract Points in the Reference Manual
for details on this tab.
Leapfrog generates a point at the midpoint of each interval and creates cu and Au values and
places them in the Numeric Data folder as shown below.
The overlay indicates that the locations have been calculated from another object in Leapfrog.
Double-clicking on the locations will re-open the Extract Assay Points dialog.
Option 2: Import
If you have used Option 1, this topic may be skipped.
Find a file called Marvin_Cu_Au.csv under the tutorials\Marvin folder,
The first five lines of the file Marvin_Cu_Au.csv are:

NORTH,EAST,ELEVATION,Cu,Au,rocktype,zone
7284.159,3892.818,719.746,0.09,0.12,QzP,OX
7285.004,3894.63,716.282,0.09,0.13,QzP,OX
7286.061,3896.896,711.952,0.07,0.15,QzP,OX
7287.118,3899.163,707.621,0.1,0.13,QzP,OX
The first three columns of the comma separated value (CSV) file are Northing (Y), Easting (X) and
Elevation (Z) coordinates expressed in meters. There are two assay attribute columns of Cu (%)
and Au (ppm) values. Then there are two text columns rocktype and zone.
To import Marvin_Cu_Au.csv into Leapfrog, right-click on the Numeric Data folder in the project
tree and select Import. Navigate to the Marvin_Cu_Au.csv file. lternatively, the data can be
imported by selecting Project > Import > Point Data from the main menu.
Most commonly used procedures can be accessed by right mouse clicking

on objects that are present in the Project pane. This action brings up a list
of tasks that requires selection with the mouse.
1. The CSV Import dialog box (below) is displayed once the data file is selected.
The Leapfrog coordinate convention is East (X), North (Y) and Elevation (Z).
Leapfrog will attempt to match the header with the appropriate columns. In this
file, the column NORTH was correctly matched with the Y axis.
2. If the assigned columns are incorrect, click on the column header and select the correct column
assignment from the drop-down list, as shown below:
3. To import the Cu data column, click on the column header where it says Not Imported and
select "Cu" Numbers from the menu, or press N.
4. The field name of Cu or Au can be changed if Custom Name is selected in the drop-down list
and another name is typed in the dialogue box that appears.
5. Text values can be imported in a similar manner. To import the rocktype values click on the
column heading and choose "rocktype" Text from the menu or press the key E.
6. Note that outlying points can be removed using the options on the lower left, but most problems
can be resolved if points located on the X,Y,origin are removed (ie x=0 or y=0). Values less than
zero are removed by default, but these values can be left in, or set to zero, or trapped with an
error message. In most situations special codes would have been already removed.
7. Once the Cu and Au data are imported, the Project pane appears as follows:
The Cu and Au elements and the rocktype and zone are all imported at
once under the Marvin_Cu_Au points in the project.
The point data generated through Option 1 and Option 2 are slightly
different. In the rest of the tutorial, it is assumed that you have generated
the assay points from Drillhole data, ie. Option 1.
The Significance of Font Types in Leapfrog

After the Import button is pressed or in the import dialogue box, the new Cu and Au objects that
appear in the Tutorial project tree are shown in grey fonts. They also all appear in the Processing
List. Grey fonts are used in Leapfrog to identify data that is ready for processing.
The data that appear in the Processing Tasks are automatically processed by Leapfrog at this
stage. This processing is needed for each dataset that is imported into Leapfrog.
When an objects enters the processing queue, it is shown with light blue font in the two left panes
(Project and Processing Tasks). Then it will turn into bold green font indicating the data is
currently processing.
Once processing is completed, the objects are deleted from the Processing Tasks list and the two
left panes appear as below. The fonts in the Project pane are now displayed in black font,
signifying that they have been processed.
The above views of the data occurs rapidly (within one second) for the
Marvin data. These steps would be much more noticeable when importing
large datasets.
The above views of the data illustrate the use of various font types to signify processing stages in
Leapfrog. All objects in Leapfrog use this system of font display in the Project and Processing
List panes. In summary, these are:
1. Grey font: Processing for the object has been defined, but not yet performed, nor placed in
the processing queue.
2. Light Blue font: The processing task has been placed in the processing task queue (in the
case of assay data import, this step is automatic).
3. Bold Green font: Currently being processed.
4. Black font: The processing has been completed and taken off the Processing Tasks list.
5. Red font: Error in processing.
6. Orange font: One of the input objects this object requires to process encountered an Error
(and is in red font).
7. Bold Black font: Object that is in the scene (explained in the Data Viewing Tutorial)
Saving a Project
The Tutorial project, with Cu and Au datasets imported, will have been saved automatically. You
can save it manually by selecting Project > Save from the Menu, or use of the keyboard shortcut
Ctrl+S.
In addition to manual saving, Leapfrog has an Auto save facility running in

the background, as explained in the section on Running Leapfrog.
Data Viewing Tutorial Page 1 of 50
Data Viewing Tutorial
Overview
• How to access object data properties
• How to view imported grade data in the tutorial project
• Some basic 3D navigation of the data in the scene window
• How to create and manage partitions
• How to create colour palettes
• How to obtain and edit section views
• How to alter the appearance of objects in the scene using the shape list
• How to use the moving plane
• How to scale the object view along the Z-axis
• How to save and restore scenes
• Bounding boxes
Prerequisites to this tutorial are the Drillhole Data Import Tutorial and Point Data
Import/Extraction Tutorial. The Tutorial project must be opened and Cu and Au
grades imported into this project prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Data Viewing Tutorial >
Accessing Object Properties

Open the tutorial project created in the Point Data Import/Generation Tutorial.
View the properties of the imported Cu data by right-clicking on Cu in the project tree and selecting
Properties:
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This brings up a Properties window that has information regarding the imported data. You might find the
Properties window familiar unless you skipped the Table Properties topic in the Point Data
Import/Extraction Tutorial.
Basic Display Techniques

Viewing an Object
If an object in the project tree is viewable, you can see the View option when you right-click on the object
entry.
Tick the View option if you wish to display the object.

Alternatively, to display the object, click on the object entry and drag and drop it inside the scene window:
You can also individually display grade value objects (shown as icons, such as Au and cu) in a similar
way.
This will display the parent point data object and colour it with the selected grade value. Once the cu data is
loaded, three things will occur, as illustrated below:
1. The m_assays point data will appear in the scene window coloured by the cu grade.
2. The font of m_assays in the projects tree will change to bold.
3. m_assays now appears in the shape list with cu in the display combo box.
The axis box is also displayed in the image above. You can turn on and off the axis box by
selecting/unselecting Scene > Grid > Show Axis Box.
Viewing Angle
You can do 3D navigations with the mouse. Left-click and drag for rotation or use the scroll button for
zooming in/out. For further details, see 3D navigation and display settings of the model. Your current
viewing angle is indicated by Plunge and Azimuth displayed in the bottom-right corner of the scene.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Data Viewing Tutorial > Basic Display Techniques >
3D Navigation and Display Settings of the Model

The 3D models produced by Leapfrog can be navigated using the mouse and keyboard.
3D Navigation with the Mouse

Rotation: Left-click-and-drag
Zoom In: Right-click-and-drag up the screen, or scroll the middle mouse wheel forward
Zoom Out: Right-click-and-drag down the screen, or scroll the middle mouse wheel backward
Pan: Middle-click-and-drag
Centre View: Middle-click (point under the mouse cursor will be the new centre of view and of
rotations)
Keyboard Shortcuts
Home View: Home key on keyboard places the view looking north east
Rotation: Use the arrow keys (Å, Æ, Ç, È) to rotate the view vertically or horizontally. Use
Shift+arrow for smaller steps
Zoom In: Page-Up on the keyboard. Use Shift-Page Up for smaller steps
Zoom Out: Page-Down on the keyboard. Use Shift-Page Down for smaller steps
Look North: N key on keyboard
Look East: E key on keyboard
Look West: W key on keyboard

Look South: S key on keyboard
Look Down: D key on keyboard
Look Up: U key on keyboard
Look at Slicer: L key on keyboard. The viewing angle becomes perpendicular to the slicer.
Bookmark View: Ctrl-B key on keyboard. Only one view can be bookmarked. If more than one
scene need to be stored, consider the Save current scene option. Refer to Saving
and Retoring Scenes in the User's Guide and Tutorials.
Restore View: B key on keyboard. Goes back to the bookmarked view.
Orthographic(Projection): O (not zero, but 'ooh') key on keyboard
Perspective: P key on keyboard
Scene Menu
In addition to the above manipulation functions, there are other settings under the Scene menu that alter
the overall appearance and behaviour of the Scene area. The default settings for these display functions
are shown below:
Rotation Settings
Scene > Geographic Rotation (default): The azimuth and elevation of the model view can be varied,
but the model cannot be "rolled", that is, the model's Z axis is constrained to be vertical.
Scene > Free Rotation: The rotation of the model is not fixed to any axes but completely free
Camera Settings
Scene > Camera > Perspective (default): Perspective view of the model space
Scene > Camera > Orthographic: Orthographic projection of the model space
Slicer and Plane Settings
Scene > Slicer > Show: Selecting Show from this menu or clicking the knife icon activates the
slicing function (explained in the Section View Manipulation topic)
Scene > Plane > Show: Selecting Show from this menu or clicking the plane icon activates the
slicing function (explained in the Section View Manipulation topic)
Scene > Swap Slicer and Plane: Selecting this from the menu or clicking the button aligns the
slicer to the moving plane (or the other way around depending on the current visibility of the slicer and
the plane. Details given in the Moving Plane Manipulation topic).
Grid Viewing Options
Scene > Grid > Show Grid: When Show is turned on, selecting Show Grid displays the model grid. As
with Show Numbers, the grid spacing is automatically adjusted.
Scene > Grid > {Loose, Normal, Fine} Spacing
Scene > Grid > Show Axes Lines: Shows the model space Grid of East (Red), North (Green), and
Elevation (Blue) and extents of the data in the scene
Scene > Grid >Numbers on Axes: When Show Axes Lines is turned on, selecting this option displays
scale ticks along the Grid. These are automatically adjusted depending on the extent of the data, as well
as the current zoom setting.
Scene > Grid >Show Axis Box: When Show Axes Lines is turned on, selecting this option displays
the axes box that encloses the data currently being displayed.
Colour Scheme
Scene > Colour Scheme > Black Background: Default black background colour scheme
Scene > Colour Scheme > White Background: Alternative white background colour scheme
Colour schemes can be created, removed or modified from the View Properties dialog.
Clear Scene
Scene > Clear Scene or the button from the menu clears the Scene window and removes all the
entries in the Shape List.
Screen Capture
Scene > Render Image : Opens the Render Image dialog which allows you to render the current view
to a file.
Scene > Export: Opens the Export Scenes dialog which allows you to save multiple scenes to file.
These scenes can then be viewed in 3D with the Leapfrog Scene Viewer.
Shape Properties Settings

Point data can be displayed at a fixed pixel size or as spheres with fixed model size. The default point data
display is as pixels. The default display setting for points are as two pixel size, as shown below.
The point size can be changed with the control located in the scene toolbar (see image above).
The following image shows the data when the point size is increased to 5.
Scene > Quality has several choices to change how the data is displayed. If rotation and zooming is
sluggish try the Fast, or Fastest settings. If you have a good graphics card, you may like to try the High, or
Highest settings.
Displaying as spheres is controlled on each entry in the shape list individually (see image below). The
radius of the sphere is controlled by editing the Radius combo box.
If the Quality is Fast or Fastest the sphere rendering option is ignored and pixel
rendering is used.
If the Quality is Normal the spheres may appear jagged.
The Quality setting does not affect the quality of rendered images. The scene is
always rendered with Quality set to Highest.
If the Enhance high values option is enabled, you will have a better view of high values.
If you wish to specify the range of values that will be displayed, you may find the Value filter handy. In the
following example, grades between 1.81 and 3.22 are shown, but others are removed from the scene.
Altering Colourmap Settings

The colour applied to the grade values is based on a continuous colour mapping. Often, manual alteration
of the colourmap helps understanding the grade distribution in your data better.
The default colourmap applied to the Cu data can be accessed by clicking the Edit button next to the
Colourmap combo box of the shape list (see image below).
This brings up the Edit Colourmaps dialog box:
Alternative colour gradients available for selection from the Gradient drop-down list are shown below.
Select the first one:
Minimum and Maximum values in the Limits settings control the lower and upper bounds of the
colourmap. Values that lie outside the bounds are coloured with the last colour at the appropriate end of the
colourmap. Reducing the range of the upper and lower bounds is useful if the bulk of the data points have
values in a range much smaller than the overall range of the data. This is common in skewed data.
The From Input Data button automatically adjust Minimum and Maximum values such that the colourmap
would follow the actual data distribution of the input data. Click this button and see if these values are
adjusted.
The transformation of the colourmap can be changed by dragging the dots as shown below.
Leapfrog updates the object in the scene window as the colourmap is being edited so you can see the
effects immediately.
It might be helpful to view the histogram of the data when adjusting the curve
points. Refer to Histogram in Reference Manual. Note that both dialogs may be
open at the same time.
Threshold Colouring
Overview
In this tutorial, we will learn how to manipulate the colour lookup table for displaying grade above/below a
threshold with two contrasting colours.
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The Tutorial project
must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this tutorial.
The colour banding that is applied to the grade values in the picture below is a continuous colouring.
A quick way of generating threshold colour banding is to use the colour lookup table. We will now change
the grade colouring to red and blue bands with a cutoff of 1.0, which is the grade value of the second grade
shell.
1. Open the Edit Colourmap dialog. To get brighter colours, choose the second colourmap from the
Gradient list.
2. Drag the control dots to configure the colour map to look similar to the one below. For precise
setting, type in 1.0 for both Lower and Upper Curve points. Finally, click on Close to dismiss the
dialog.
3. We now turn on the slicer by clicking on icon. (Alternatively, select Scene > Slicer > Show from
the menu).
4. Highlight Slicer in the Shape List and select the Remove back option ( ).
5. On the bottom-right corner of the window, specify the parameters for the slicer so that the Slice
width is 547.21, the Step size is 30, the Dip and Dip azimuth are 90 and the X Location is 4200.
6. Enable the view of m_assays and cu 1.0 only. To get the scene similar to the screenshot, set the
slicer parameters as shown.
7. Press E to look east and get the exact same viewing angle as the screenshot.
Now most of the red values are inside the mesh. The reason that there are some isolated points of the
wrong colour inside and outside is because the surface is only a visual representation of the grade
threshold boundary and is limited in precision by the resolution of the mesh.
Selecting in the Scene

Individual points or intervals may be selected for objects displayed in the scene. The object selected in the
scene is highlighted in light blue and all values associated with it are displayed in the Scene Selection
dialog. The object is also selected in the shape list.
To select something in the scene, ensure the toolbar button is pressed and left-click in the scene.
The Scene Selection dialog appears out of the way, over the project tree, but can be positioned freely.
Sometimes an object can have several points very close together, or even with identical location. The
image below shows 4 collar points close together.
When this occurs, the Scene Selection dialog only shows the values for one point. To get around this,
zoom into a very fine scale as shown below. MAR024 and MAR023 now look separated from MAR025 and
MAR013, which are actually identical collar points.
Selecting in the scene works for points, intervals and mesh vertices.
Manage Partitions
Leapfrog can assign colours to textual data such as hole-id, rock-type, mineralization codes and the like.
Leapfrog uses partitions to assign colours to groups of values. For example, instead of colouring by
individual rock-codes, the rock-codes can be grouped into category types, such as soils, rock voids,
corbonatites and felsics. They can then be coloured by category types for a broader overview of the
lithological structure.
In this topic, our aim is to partition the drillholes into drilling programs. There are two drilling programs in this
example: drillholes from the data set M and those from the data set Mar.
Create a New Partition

1. Display the drillhole table m_assays. Right-click on the table name and select Manage Partitions.
2. It brings up the Manage Partitions dialogue. The Partitions pane shows the currently available
partitions. Click on holeid in the Partitions list. As the icon indicates, holeid is not a partition, but rather
a category column from the m_assays table. When a column is selected the Groups column will display
all the distinct values in that column. When a partition is selected, the Groups column will display all the
groups for that partition.
Notice that M001-M014 are from M and MAR001-MAR028 are from MAR. This is the pattern we are going
to use to create a new partition. Click on the New button to create a new partition for the holeid column.
3. This brings up the New Partition Groups window, which allows you to group values based on patterns in
the values themselves.
Based on the pattern we found above, all drillholes from M start with "M0", while the rest from MAR start
with "MA". So we group values by First 2 letters. Change the value from 1 to 2 and click on the OK button
to proceed. You may select the No groups option to manually partition them.
4. Two groups, M0 and MA were created, which contains drillholes M001-M014 and MAR001-MAR028
respectively. A colour for each group is automatically assigned, which can be changed manually by
clicking on the colour icon. Type my_partition in the Partition Name field and click OK button to
proceed.
5. Now, the new partition my_partition is listed in the Partitions pane and its two groups are shown in the
Groups list. Click on the Close button to dismiss the dialog.
6. Visit the shape list in the Leapfrog main window. The new partition, my_partition will be available in the
list.
7. You should be able to see the drillholes in two colours as defined by the new partition rule. Drillholes from
M are shown in red, others from MAR are shown in light blue.
8. Additionally, you can further edit current partition viewing. Select Edit Partition in the list.
9. When Edit Partition Colours dialogue appears, you may turn off the viewing of the group MA by
unselecting the checkbox beside MA and click OK.
10.This disables the colour display of MA. Still, thin grey lines, the trace of drillholes in MA group, are still
visible.
Edit Partitions
You can edit the partition rule created above. Let us assume that we want to create a new group short, a
sub-category of MA, such that it would include short drillholes surrounded by the yellow loops as shown
below.
You can obtain the scene similar to this by turning off the viewing of m0 group, similarly to step 10 above.
To get the holeid label beside the drillholes shown above, display the collar table in the holeid mode. Also
apply the Query filter MAR collar, to show the collar names that start with "MAR" prefix only.
While the name of most short drillholes are easy to identify, two drillholes (circled and pointed by yellow
balloons) have their holeid labels placed too close to other labels, making it difficult to identify.
Often, you can simply zoom in the view and find the matching holeid for each drillhole easily. Just click on
the drillhole of interest. A pop-up window should give you the information you wanted, i.e. the holeid of the
drillhole.
You can observe that the drillholes we wish to include in the new group short are MAR001~MAR015. To
confirm this, select holeid as partition and Edit Partitions.
Leave only MAR001~MAR015 selected and click OK to dismiss the dialog. You will need to do the same
for both m_assays and collar.
You should get a scene similar to the following one. We confirm that the drillholes we want are
MAR001~MAR015.
There are couple of ways to edit partitions. Either option should result in the same effect.
Option 1
1. Select my_partition as the partition to edit it. Then select Edit Partitions.
2. Click on the Show Group Controls button to have options for creating a new group.
3. Click on the New Group button.
4. This creates a new group with a randomly assigned colour. Replace the default name <New Group> by
typing in short.
5. The drillholes MAR001~MAR015 are currently listed as members of the group MA. Select MA in the
groups pane. Go to the MA Members pane. Hold down the shift key while you select
MAR001~MAR015 in the MA Members list. Keep the shift key down and drag and drop your
selections into the short group. This results in the drillholes MAR001~MAR015 relocated to the group
short. Now click OK to proceed.
6. Now go the Edit Partition dialog for my_partion of m_assays. Turn off the view of groups M0 and MA
and turn on the view of short. Display m_assay by holeid with my_partition should look like:
Option 2
1. Right-click on m_assays in the project tree and click on Manage Partitions. When the Manage
Partitions dialog appears, select Edit on my_partition.
2. This brings up the Edit Partition dialog. We are creating a new group here by clicking on the New
Group button.
3. Type in short as a new Group name.
4. This creates an empty pane for the short group. The colour for this group may differ from what is shown
below. You may click on the colour swatch to edit the default colour. Select MA in the Groups pane.
When MA is highlighted, its members are listed in the MA Members pane. We wish to relocate
MAR001~MAR015 to a new group short. Hold down the shift key and select MAR001~MAR015 in the
MA Members pane. Now, click the Assign To button. Below the button, you will find a list where you
can decide which group you will move them to. Select short. The relocation is complete instantly. Now
click OK.
5. This has created the new group short and placed MAR001~MAR015 in short. Repeat step 6 of Option
1. This should give the same looking scene.
Colour Palettes
The colours Leapfrog assigns to partitions are either random or chosen to have well spaced colours. This
behaviour can be overridden by defining colour palettes from which colours will be taken, if possible. This is
useful if your organisation has a colour coding standard for a data type or if you just have a particular
preference. Colour palettes can be exported and imported for use in multiple projects.
Manage Colour Palettes Dialog

Select Project > Manage Colour Palettes... from the main menu to open the dialog.
Initially there are no colour palettes. You can import a colour palette if you have any, or create a new palette
from this dialog. One way of creating a new palette is to create one from a partition, which we explain
shortly.
Alternatively, the Manage Colour Palettes dialog can be opened from the Manage Partitions dialog (See
Manage Partitions topic) via the Manage Palettes button.
Create a Palette from a partition

We will be creating a new palette from rocktype. Select rocktype in the Partitions list and click on the
New From Partition button.
In the Edit Colour Palette dialog, you can build a hierarchy of colours in each palette by adding sub-folders
under the root. Also you can add or delete colours from the palette. We skip these features here.
Let us assume an imaginary colour coding standard. Yellow for AvT, Brown for GnD, and Lavender for
QzP.
Click on the Colour box for each row and change the colour accordingly.
The Description value is displayed in this dialog, thus you may like to edit these to more readable strings
such as 'Quartz Porphyry' for QzP. The values in the Code column are used to match the colour with a
value. When a palette is used by a partition (or applied to a category column) colours are assigned when
the column value matches the colour palette code. The codes must be unique throughout an entire palette,
but the same code can be used in multiple palettes.
Type my_palette in for the name of the new palette. Click OK to proceed. This completes a colour
palette creation.
Edit a Palette
In case you need to edit the current palette, you can access to the palette editing via the Manage Colour
Palettes dialog.
Applying a Colour Palette

The colour palette my_palette has codes AvT, GnD and QzP, meaning that it can be applied to a partition
that has the same corresponding set of codes.
Select rocktype in the Partitions pane, and click on the Palette button to apply colours from the palette.
This brings up the Select Colour Palette dialog, to let you choose from the available palettes. Select
my_palette and click OK.
Notice that the colours defined in my_palette are applied to the groups of my_partition.
When you display m_assays by rocktype, you are expected to see a scene similar to:
Export and Import a Colour Palette

Once you have created a colour palette, consider exporting it to a file for a future use. If you decide to do
so, open the Manage Colour Palettes dialog and select the palette you wish to export, and click on the
Export Palette button. The default file extension for the palette is "*.lfc". Similarly, you can import the
saved colour palettes through the Import Palette button.
Colour Selection
Colour palettes are listed in the colour selection dialog. So even if you don't have any partitions, a colour
palette is a great place to keep your favourite colours. A colour selection dialog typically appears when you
double-click on a colour swatch.
Section View Manipulation
Overview
The following topics are covered in this section:
• The slicer toolbar
• Getting a specific easting, northing and plan sections
• Displaying two dimensional section contours of 3D meshes
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The Tutorial

project must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this tutorial.
Interpolate cu and obtain cu 0.61, cu 1.0 and cu 1.3. Adjust the colourmap similar to below
Drag the interpolant cu (Linear - Isotropic) and drop it in the Scene window. The outer surface will be
translucent with lower opacity than the inner surface.
When all three isosurfaces are displayed, you should see a scene similar to:
Sections can be taken through the model from any direction using the slicing tool. To activate the slicer click
on the button on the scene toolbar. The slicer is regarded as a shape, and appears in the shape list.
The control for the orientation and position of the slicer is shown alongside the shape list.
The slicer entry in the shape list has various icons.
Icon Meaning
Thick slice
Remove front
Remove back
Align to camera
Slice east (X) axis
Slice north (Y) axis
Slice elevation (Z) axis
Lock slicer to camera
Centre slicer in scene
Select the button to remove the front, and select the button to set the slicer to the current view.
To view specific eastings click the button to align the slicer to face in the east (X) direction. The section
can be moved backwards and forwards by comma (,) and period(.) keys, or holding down the Ctrl key
and right-dragging the mouse up and down.
Now, let us try a different orientation and position of the slicer. Change the east intercept to 4200 with a
slice width of 100 and step size of 50.
Select for thick slice. Press E to view east and press O to switch to orthographic projection mode. Now
use the comma (,) and period (.) keys and to get a similar scene as below.
You can also turn off the mesh faces by de-activating the icon of each object in the shape list, to leave
only the section lines visible as shown below.
Using the Shape List
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The Tutorial

project must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this tutorial.
Sharing Colour Lookup Table

By default, a grade shell uses the same colour lookup table as the grade data it has been derived from (by
interpolation). Observe that all entries in the Shape List (except for the slicer) have the same colouring: cu.
This is because all the grade shells, cu 0.61, cu 1.0 and cu 1.3 were generated by interpolating cu grade
data in m_assays.
That means that changing the colouring on one object will change them all as they all share the cu colour
lookup table. In this way, the colour of the grade shells are linked to the grade data. For example, changing
the colour lookup as shown:
will change the colours of the points and all the isosurfaces as shown below:
See-through Multiple Grade-Shells
If you drag the parent interpolant ( Cu Rbf (Linear - Isotropic) in this instance) over to the viewer it
automatically makes low grade outer layers transparent, so you can see through the mineralization. The
high grade deposits appear to be sitting inside the lower.
The opacity control (shown below) can be used to change the translucency level.
Turning off the slicer gives the following:
Other Colour Modes

Grade shells can be coloured with grade value, a constant colour, or any other value that has been
evaluated on it. These can be selected from the Display column of the Shape List. To display a constant
colour on the surface select Flat colour from the display column drop-list.
A randomly chosen colour has been automatically assigned to cu 0.61. Click on the colour swatch
and change the colour if required.
Alongside the colour swatch, the icon surrounded by the red-rectangle is a dummy colour swatch for
the inside surface. By default, both sides (Inside/Outside) of a grade shell would be coloured the
same, so we have a "dummy" colour swatch as a placeholder. If you want to colour the inside of the
grade shell differently, click on the dummy swatch and select the required colour.
Below, the outer-most grade shell, cu 0.61 is set to a flat colour grey (with no opacity):
Shape List Settings
Overview
The following topics are:
• Slicing override for objects in the shape list
• Sectional trace of isosurfaces
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The Tutorial project
must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this tutorial.
Slicing Override
The global slicing settings set on the slicer toolbar may be overridden on individual objects.
Due to the global slicing setting, all grade shells are sliced with the "remove front" option ( ). In the
screenshot above, the grade shell cu 0.61 is highlighted in the shape list, and its slicer override control
appears on the right. From the drop-list, select Unsliced:
Below is the view of three grade shells after overriding the global slicing setting. The entire grade shell is
shown with no slicing. Note that the opacity level of grade shell cu 0.61 has been adjusted.
Sectional Trace
Sometimes you don't want to see the smoothing of a mesh. Below is a smooth view of the mesh.
Toggle off the icon and triangular facets will be shown as below.
To see the edges of the mesh, toggle on the icon column as shown below:
You can turn off the faces completely and view the wire frames. Toggle off the icon. (Also remove cu 1.0
and cu 1.3 from the scene):
Moving Plane Manipulation

The moving plane may be used to position the slicing plane manually or to specify anisotropy directions for
data interpolation.
Basics
The moving plane is toggled on and off with the button as shown below. You can also use Scene >
Plane > Show from the main menu.
To enable manipulation of the plane, click on it. A set of controls will appear. We have moved the plane
away from the grade shells and turned off the axis lines, grid and grid box to make it easier to see:
There are two yellow dip controls, two blue azimuth controls, a red size control, an orange position control
and a green pitch control. The solid black line at the centre of the plane is the direction of the plane's
azimuth. The plane is manipulated by left-dragging the controls around the screen or by editing the scroll-
boxes in the moving plane toolbar. Here is the moving plane aligned with the major axis of the cu 0.61
grade shell.
To dismiss the moving plane controls right-click anywhere in the scene window.
The slicer may be aligned to the moving plane by clicking on the button. When the slicer is set to
"remove front", clicking on the button results in a scene similar to below.
The operation of the button varies with the visibility of the slicer and moving planes according to the
following table.
Moving Plane On Slicing Plane On Action

Yes Yes Slicer and Moving Plane are
swapped
Yes No Slicer aligns to Moving Plane
No Yes Moving Plane aligns to Slicer
No No Nothing happens
Placing the Moving Plane

A simple short-cut to place a moving plane at a required location with a required orientation is to use the
button.
Click the left mouse button where you wish the plane to start. Keep the left-button pressed down and drag
the mouse. Release the button where you wish the plane to end.
As shown below, the moving plane is positioned at your required location.
Scale Z Axis
When deposits are very planar and extend over a wide area, it is very difficult to have a good overall view of
the deposit. In such a case, this scaling the Z-axis can be used to accentuate the data distribution along the
Z-axis.
Go to Project > Scale Z Axis from the menu to open the Scale Z Axis dialog.
Type in 2.0 and you will see the Z axis of scene scaled twice the X and Y Grid, enlarging the scene
vertically:
Saving and Restoring Scenes
To save a scene in the project click on the button in the scene toolbar as shown below:
Or, select Remember Scene from the Processing menu or the right-click menu in the Project tree:
This will display the Remember Scene dialog. Type a name for the scene or accept the default name given
and click Remember. To edit a saved scene simply save the new scene with the name of the old scene.
The scene will appear in the Saved Scenes folder in the project tree as shown below.
Drag the saved scene into the scene window to display it.
Bounding Boxes
For every dataset that you import, Leapfrog will generate a bounding box around the data. This bounding
box will include a margin so that the extents lie on round numbers.
If you double-click on the bounding box itself you can view and edit the bounding box:
You can view these margins by right-clicking on m_assays in the Bounding Boxes folder and selecting
View from the menu.
When the bounding box is displayed, the Axis box is temporarily turned off.
Now, display m_assays (Au) and press E to look east and press O for orthographic view. You can see that
the box is larger than the data:
The prerequisite to the following tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial.
If you turn on the grade shell of Au 0.48, you can see that the termination of that shell corresponds with the
bounding box:
Also notice that the grade shells were bounded by the bounding box m_assays when they were created by
interpolation.
To create a bounding box manually, refer to Bounding Boxes in the Reference Manual.
Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial Page 1 of 6
Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial
Overview
• Set up interpolation parameters for an isotropic interpolation run
• Transform grade values into Gaussian or Log values before interpolation
• Run an interpolation
Prerequisites to this tutorial are the Point Data Import/Extraction Tutorial and the Data Viewing Tutorial.
The Marvin project must be opened prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial >
Setup Interpolation
Background
There are three main processing steps to grade modeling in Leapfrog:
1. Interpolation
2. Isosurfacing
3. Evaluation
Step 1, the interpolation, is largely a processing function, but does not produce any results that can be rendered on the computer
monitor. The interpolation step represents the data as a continuous mathematical function.
The outcome of the interpolation step largely depends on two things:
1. The interpolation model used
2. Transformation of the actual data values before interpolation. Non-transformed and transformed data values result,
respectively, in linear and non-linear interpolation results.
The choice of interpolation methods (e.g. spline, kriging, inverse-distance) can result in varying outcomes because the assumed
model for data continuity in space differs from one model to another. The objective of fast 3D contouring with Leapfrog is not
necessarily to create an accurate representation of the spatial data behaviour, but to generate a model that can be interpreted by
geologists. It also attempts to replace many of the manual digitization tasks undertaken by geologists. The approach is to simply
analyze the grade distribution in 3D without the need for variography or other time-consuming examination of the data. This
contouring approach is akin to 2D contouring of data such as topography, gravity and magnetics to obtain an objective view of the
data distribution. Because 2D contouring methods have dominated the processing of geophysical data, manual digitization has been
the industry norm. To recreate the hand-digitized outlines of grade, we summarize below the characteristics of hand digitized ore-
waste outlines:
1. The ore-waste boundary is smooth.
2. Resolution of the mesh is fixed according to the scale in which it was digitised.
3. The positions of the drillholes cannot be easily identified from the model.
Leapfrog can generate iso-grade wireframes with the above characteristics by interpolating the grade values with a Biharmonic
Spline function. The Biharmonic Spline is a 3D version of the 2D thin-plate spline and it is a minimum energy interpolation method.
This interpolation method may not be suitable for grade estimation, but its smooth characteristic makes it entirely suitable for the
definition of ore-waste boundary definition and also suitable for lithological boundary modelling where smooth boundary definition is
a requirement.
Interpolation Parameters
Access the Interpolation and Surfaces Parameters dialog box by right-clicking the Au line in the Project pane and selecting
Interpolate Values:
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The interpolation parameters are divided into three tabs: Grade Parameters, Variogram and Surfaces.
Grade Parameters
In this tab, you can manipulate the grade value distribution. By default, Grade Transformation is none. The minimum and maximum
grade values are initially assigned to Lower Bound and Upper Bound respectively. You can change these to cut off values that are
too low or too high. For example, if you set Upper Bound from 3.83 to 1.00, grade values above 1.00 will be regarded as 1.00.
The parameter Zero represents the value in the original distribution that will be treated as 0.0 after transformation. For example, if
zero is 2.0, a point with 2.0 grade will be regarded as 0.0. Similarly, we subtract 2.0 from every point, resulting in the entire histogram
shifted left by 2.0
If Semilog X is checked, the X-axis is log-scaled.

Bin count defines the number of bins. Obviously, larger bin count results in a finer histogram.
Select a Grade Transformation of Gaussian or Log if you are dealing with skewed data sets, for example gold. We discuss more
about Grade Transformation shortly.
The histogram in this tab is not automatically updated when you make a change to the parameter setting. Click on the Update
Histogram to refresh the data value distribution.
Variogram
For isotropic interpolation, the Variogram tab may be used to define the directional trend (anisotropy) and the variogram
parameters:
For now, we are interested in "Isotropic Interpolation", so leave Global Trend ticked and the default setting unchanged.
At the bottom of this tab, you can define the interpolation accuracy. The default value in the accuracy box is 0.01 (expressed in Au
ppm). This value should be about or less than the detection limit of the data value. Incidentally, the detection limit of the Au assay
data is known to be 0.01g/t, therefore 0.01 is suitable for the interpolation accuracy.
Variogram Parameters setting can be critical to obtain a realistic 3D surface model. For now, let us leave the default settings
unchanged. Detailed information can be found in Advanced Interpolation Settings in the Reference Manual.
Surfaces
For isotropic interpolation the Surfaces tab may be used to alter the parameters for the grade shells:
For example you can double-click on a Threshold or Percent value and type in a new value as shown below. You can change a
value for all the surfaces by editing the value in the top row with the name All Surfaces.
For details of each parameter, refer to the Isosurfacing Tutorial.
Now click OK.
Grade Transformation
Why Transform Data Values Before Interpolation?
Extreme skewness in the frequency distribution of data values, as found in many gold assay datasets, can distort the spatial grade
interpolation to the extent that grade boundaries do not appear smooth at drillhole positions. This distortion can be easily detected in
the interpolation as extreme indentation of the grade isosurface at the drillhole positions. A particular iso-grade value surface can
either form a spike or a spout-like indent at the drillhole positions. Such an interpolation result, where we can detect the drillhole
sampling positions, is not a realistic result and must be eliminated or minimised. Our research has found that the simplest method of
correcting this distortion caused by the interpolation is to transform the data values to minimise data skewness. To do this, we utilise
either the Gaussian or Log transform.
Display the transformed histogram by selecting Update Histogram in the Grade Parameters tab of the Interpolation and Surfaces
Parameters dialog box. The histogram of the Au data shows that its values are not extremely skewed. Transformation of the data
values is not necessary for such a dataset. However for illustrative purposes, we will transform this data using the two transformation
types.
Gaussian Transform
Selecting Gaussian from the Grade Transform drop down menu results in transforming the frequency distribution of the data values
into a bell-curve shape. All values are given a unique Gaussian value and zero values are given the lowest Gaussian value. This
type of transformation is called empirical Gaussian transformation.
Select Gaussian from the Grade Transformation drop down menu on the Grade Parameters tab:
You can manipulate the data range by editing the three parameters Lower Bound, Upper Bound and Zero. You can choose which
part of the data range the transformation will apply. The defaults are the lower and upper values of the dataset. Zero values can also
be placed in a specific part of the Gaussian transform and the default value is 0.000.
Leave the defaults values as they are and type Au_GT in the Name text box. Click OK.
Remember, that you need to click on the Update Histogram button to see the latest view of the histogram.
Log Transform
A (natural) Log transformation of the data values achieves a similar outcome as Gaussian transformation of the data. To apply Log
transformation, choose Log from the Grade Transformation drop down menu:
The last three rows: Distribution Minimum, Pre-Log Minimum and Post-Log Minimum below Grade Transformation are now
editable. These are used to place the distribution minimum, which is usually zero, to a positive number so that Log values can be
obtained for all data including zero values. The default is to translate the zero value to 1, then translate 1 back to zero after the Log
transformation. Use these default values and type Au_LT in the Name text box. Click OK.
Running the Interpolation

The appearance of the project tree and the processing tasks pane after defining three interpolants (Au, Au_GT, Au_LT) is shown
below:
The interpolants are shown using Grey fonts, indicating that the processing tasks have been defined, but not yet processed. The
interpolation can be started on individual interpolants by:
• Right-clicking on the interpolant, then choosing Run
• Choosing Processing > Run from the menu
• Press Ctrl+R
Alternatively you can run all of the objects that appear in the processing tasks list by:
• Choosing Processing > Run All from the menu
• Clicking the button on the main toolbar

• Pressing Shift+Ctrl+R
Run all the objects and note that the names of the objects turn to Green font, indicating that they are being processed:
The names then turn to black font once interpolation is complete, as shown below. The grade shells shown in bold are displayed in
the scene viewer.
The interpolants Au, Au_GT and Au_LT are now stored in your project along with the default grade shells. They are continuous
functions with infinite resolution and are scale-independent. The functions do not depend on a fixed resolution 3D grid for their
definition. Imaging the details of these functions is the topic of the next tutorial on Isosurfacing Grade Values.
Isosurfacing Tutorial Page 1 of 11
Isosurfacing Tutorial
Overview
• How to generate iso-grade isosurfaces
• How to render the isosurfaces in the Scene
• How to get an estimate of the grade contained in the largest grade shell.
The prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The

Marvin Project must be opened prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Isosurfacing Tutorial >
Isosurfacing Grade Values
Viewing the Isosurface

The interpolation process, outlined in the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial, results in a volumetric
interpolation function that is saved in the Tutorial project along with three default grade shells.
The process of creating an iso-grade mesh is called isosurfacing. We "isosurfaced" Au_GT and
Au_LT in the last tutorial.
This time, create a default isosurface Au (Linear Isotropic) where the Grade Transformation is
set to None. Leave all other setting unchanged and click OK to dismiss the dialog.
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Wait until computing the isosurface finishes, and display all three isosurfaces.
The icon represents the isosurfaced mesh. The icon under a mesh represents the
evaluation of an interpolant on the vertices of this mesh.
To view the 0.48ppm Au grade shell in the scene, right-click the isosurface Au 0.48, and select
View from the menu. Alternatively, drag the mesh onto the scene window using the mouse.
You can also view all the isosurfaces of the interpolant Au (Linear - Isotropic) by viewing the
interpolant in the same manner. When viewed in this way, the isosurfaces are automatically made
transparent so you can see the inner grade shells as shown below. If better contrast of colour is
needed, adjust the colourmap accordingly.
The grade interpolant is evaluated on the mesh automatically and is displayed on the surface by
default.
It may seem odd that an isosurface mesh be evaluated with the same interpolant from which it was
generated. If the mesh represents 0.48ppm Au, then the evaluation on the mesh vertices, other
than where it is clipped by a domain or bounding box, should exhibit all the same values of
0.48ppm. When rendered on screen the mesh should be a constant colour. The isosurfacing
process however, approximates the isosurface boundary on a fixed resolution grid. As a
consequence, this results in departure from the true isosurface, which shows up as slight
variations in the colour of the mesh and is more pronounced when the mesh resolution is
decreased (value increased). Read on for the resolution setting.
Editing the Isosurfacing Parameters

To edit the newly created default isosurface of Au, double-click on the object in the project tree or
right-click on the interpolant and select Isosurface from the menu. This brings up the
Interpolation and Surfaces Parameters dialog box open at the Surfaces tab:
Threshold
Update 0.78 to 0.75 in the Threshold column of the second isosurface:
Resolution
The default Resolution of the mesh is 9m. For a more detailed surface, change the Resolution for
all surfaces to 5m at once by editing the 9.0 in the top row of the Resolution column:
Below are two figures comparing the appearance of 5m and 50m resolution meshes of the
0.48ppm Au isosurfaces. Note the colour variations particularly in the 50m resolution mesh, which
represents departures from the 0.48 ppm value. Evaluations are treated in more detail later in the
Evaluation Tutorial
The 0.48ppm Au grade shell at 5m resolution is shown below:
The 0.48ppm Au grade shell at 50m resolution is shown below:
Small values for resolution results in more detailed surfaces
The nominated Resolution value of the mesh is critical to the success of an

isosurfacing run. If this value is too small, the isosurfacing process will
generate a mesh that is too large to be workable. In contrast, a coarse
resolution value will result in not capturing the details of the interpolation. It is
recommended to initially start with the default value then work down to smaller
values of resolution (eg. half of the default resolution) if required.
Bounding Box
The default is the extents of the Au dataset. Leave this as the default bounding box.
Domain
The default is None as we don't have any domains yet. Refer to the Domaining Tutorial for a full
description of domains and their uses.
Enclose High
When selected, it will compute the inverse-isosurface, i.e. the bounding box minus the original
isosurface. As shown below, Au 0.48 with Enclosed High on shows a hollow space in the middle.
This dimension of the hollow space is equivalent to the isosurface of Au 0.48 that is created with
the Enclosed High off.
Triangles on B.Box/Triangles on Domain

When the isosurface goes beyond the B.Box, i.e. bounding box or a domain, it is clipped. When
clipping occurs with this option OFF, the intersection plane is shown "open". The following
screenshot shows Au 0.48 with this option off. Notice the top is unsealed. By default, this option is
ON and extra triangles will be drawn on the plane to seal the isosurfaces.
Exact Intersection
When the isosurface intersects other isosurfaces or is clipped by a bounding box or a domain, the
isosurface engine needs to work out the edge lines. Depending on the precision requirement, three
options are available.
• Off mode is fast. With this option, it simply trims the boundary of the isosurface, instead of
computing precise intersections. As a result, the edges may look jagged or chipped.
• Multi-Res(solution) is considerably slow, but will give smooth edges. The isosurface engine will
no longer rely on the specified resolution, but adaptively zoom into even finer resolution if
necessary.
• Standard mode is a compromise between Off and Multi-Res. It still uses the specified
resolution, but will try to give reasonably fine details of edges.
Related information is given in Boolean Mesh in the Reference Manual.
Grade Estimation Using Isosurfaces

A summary of the grade shell volumes is displayed on the interpolants properties dialog. These
can be used for estimating the total grade.

To open an interpolant's properties dialog right-click on it and choose Properties.
Then click on the Grade Shells tab, as shown below:
A list of grade shell thresholds and volumes are listed along with a simple estimate of the total
grade contained in the grade shells. The dialog above shows that there is an estimated 49.79
million units inside the Au 0.48 grade shell. The grade shell list is tab delimited and can be copied
and pasted into a spreadsheet such as Excel.
More grade shells can be added to improve the accuracy of the estimate. After adding Au 0.55 and
Au 0.85 and Au 1.2, the estimation is updated to 48.56 million units inside the Au 0.48:
Note that Leapfrog will not display more than four significant figures. See the Grade Estimation
topic in the Reference Manual section for more information.
The estimate is based purely on numerical integration of the grade shells

and does not consider change of support effects nor deleterious materials.
Due to the smoothing properties of interpolation (kriging) high grade
volumes will tend to be underestimated.
Isosurfacing Errors
When the specified parameters are not appropriate, Leapfrog may fail to generate an isosurface. In
such a case, an error will be reported in the Processing Tasks.
The isosurface that has failed is shown in red colour in the project pane.
Right-click on the Au 3.83 (the failed isosurface) and open its Properties dialog. The Errors tab
contains error messages which might be helpful to adjust the parameters.
On this occasion, the error message indicates that the threshold 2.0 appears to be too close to the
maximum data value. Reducing the threshold will fix the problem in this situation.
Exercise
Create the isotropic isosurfaces of cu 0.61, cu 1.0 and cu 1.3 with resolution 9.0.
Topography Tutorial Page 1 of 16
Topography Tutorial
Overview
• What are topography points?
• Importing topographic control points
• Selecting a subset of topographic points
• Interpolating and generating the topographic surface
• Mapping an image onto the topographic surface
The Tutorial Project must be opened prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Topography Tutorial >
What are Topography Points?

The Leapfrog Project window contains several folders including Numeric Data, Boundaries and Topography.
The Numeric Data is the folder where assay data can be imported, as discussed in the Point Data
Import/Generation Tutorial. As their names suggest, the Boundaries and Topography folders are for points
that lie on a boundary surface and so normally will not have any element attributes. Topographic height points
are an example of Topography as they are point positions in space where the topographic surface must
intersect.
Topographic height points can be used to constrain isosurfaces generated from grade interpolation to lie below
the Earth's surface. For example, the low-grade isosurfaces of the Marvin Cu values generated in Leapfrog
extrapolate above the drillhole collars on the topographic surface, where in reality mineralization does not exist.
In such a situation the topography data should be used to control the extents of the grade isosurface.
An example of boundary data would be a set points on a fault. If a fault can be identified in the drillholes, then
these intersection points can be interpolated to generate the fault surface in Leapfrog. This information can
then be used to control the extents of the grade isosurfaces on either side of the fault.
In other words, the topography and boundaries folders contain data that can be used to define domain
boundaries.
The major difference between creating domain boundaries in Leapfrog and GMP software
products is that Leapfrog can conduct functional Boolean operations, as opposed to mesh-
based Boolean operations.
Constraining of grade isosurfaces below the topography in Leapfrog first requires generating a topography
mesh. Note however that it is the function defining the topography mesh, rather than the mesh itself, that is
used to restrict the isosurfaces. The constraint is computed on the fly and does not require a second clipping
step. In contrast, most other software products require the grade and topography meshes to be intersected
after they are generated. The Leapfrog method is faster.
In this tutorial a topographic point set will be imported into the Tutorial Project to illustrate how to prepare this
dataset to be used for functional Boolean operations. The process of using the topographic interpolation for
clipping grade meshes is treated in the Domaining Tutorial.
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Importing Topographic Points
Option 1: Topographic Point Data Available

If you have a separate topographic point data available, you can import it following the steps below:
1. Right-click on the Topography directory in the Project tree and select Import:
2. Select All files in the Files of Type drop-down list and open the file
tutorials\Marvin\Marvin_topo_large.STR. .You will have to change Files of type from CSV files
(*.csv) to All Files(*.*) to see this file.
3. The East, North and RL columns are automatically selected for import. Type Topo in the Name list box
and press Import. The imported Topo data will briefly show up in the Processing Tasks list and when
processing is completed the font will turn to black.
4. Add Topo and m_assays data to the scene. Notice that the Topo data is much more laterally extensive
than the m_assays data. The following image shows an overhead view of both data, obtained by
clicking on the scene, and pressing D on the keyboard:
The imported topography data consists of spot heights and drillhole collar positions. Note
that the topography data is not gridded. It is not necessary to provide gridded topography
data, as Leapfrog's interpolation methods can easily deal with scattered raw data.
Option 2: Extract Topographic Point Data from Collar Table

The topographic point data can be extracted from the collar table.
1. Right-click on the collar table and select Extract Collar Points.
2. This bring up the Select Collar Points dialog. You can apply a query filter if required. This is particularly
useful if you have to exclude certain collar points for topography modelling. For example, if a drillhole starts
below ground-level, the collar point of this drillhole should be excluded. For now, let us assume that all the
collar points are valid and should be included. Click OK.
3. This creates a new entry topo_collar under Topography.
4. View topo_collar. The number of points is significantly less than that of Topo, a separate topographic data
set, which we imported above.
When no extra topographic data set is available, this function will be a viable option (or perhaps the only
option too) for obtaining a topographic surface.
Interpolating and Isosurfacing topography

The interpolation and isosurfacing of topography and boundary data can be achieved in one step.
1. Right-click on the topography data Topo and select Surface Interpolant:
2. This will create three objects under the topography points: first the distance-to-surface values, secondly
an interpolant and finally the topography surface as shown below. Click the button to run them.
3. Dragging the Topo Surface into the scene will give the following result:
4. Similarly, let us interpolate topo_collar, the points extracted from the collar table. The coverage of this
surface is not as wide as the Topo, since this has been derived from a very small number of data
available in the collar table. Still, the two surfaces coincide reasonably well. In the screenshot below, the
orange surface is the isosurface of topo_collar, which is partially invisible due to heavy overlap with
Topo.
These steps apply to Boundary data as well, however boundary data will always use
the bounding box of the defining points as the default.
If your topography data is densely sampled the Surface Triangulation method may work just as well (and be
faster).
5. Right-click on the topography data Topo and select Surface Triangulation:
6. Add the mesh to the scene. This will triangulate the points directly as shown below.
Image Mapping onto Topographic Surface
Importing GeoTIFF Images and Mapping onto a Surface

We demonstrate how a GeoTIFF-format image is imported into Leapfrog and mapped onto the topographic
surface.
GeoTIFF is a metadata standard which allows geo-referencing information to be embedded within a TIFF
image file. Many GIS software products support and produce GeoTIFF images.
Right-click on the Images folder in the project and select Import.
When the Load File appears, select tutorials\Marvin\terrain_geotiff.tif.This brings up the Import
Image dialog, which shows you the image you're importing and allows you to set the georeference data, if
necessary. The file terrain_geotiff.tif already has a correct georeference information, so just click OK.
The details on the georeference setting will be covered later.
View the terrain_geotiff under the Images folder. You should be able to see the image appearing below the
Topo isosurface.
Images viewed directly in this manner cannot be sliced with the slicing plane.
The supplied image, terrain_geotiff.tif, has been created for the topography point sets for Marvin, so it
aligns nicely to the topography surface that the image will be projected onto. If you have a poor alignment or
the image is too large or small, it is likely that your image file may not have a correct georeference data or not
have one at all. You can overide the image's georeference data and configure the setting manually. This is
explained later.
Now, the image is ready to be projected onto the topography isosurface. Right-click on Topo Surface and
select Images.
This brings up the Attach Images dialog, which shows you the thumbnails of available images. Select
terrain_geotiff.
When the image has been successfully projected, you should be able to view Topo Surface by
terrain_geotiff.
The image-mapped Topo Surface is displayed with the assay data.
Importing Non-GeoTIFF Image or Manual Georeference Setting

If you wish to import an ordinary image, or the GeoTIFF image does not have a correct georeference
information, you will need to configure the georeference setting manually. To illustrate this, let us import
tutorials\Marvin\terrain_no_geotiff.png. The Import Image window will appear:
This file has no georeference data at all and Override image's georeference data option is therefore disabled.
When you have a valid GeoTIFF file loaded, this option will be enabled and use it if you wish to correct its
georeference information.
Do not close this dialog just yet. We need to go back to the main window and collect some information to
configure parameters in this dialog.
Right-click on the Images and Sections folder. Select the file terrain_no_geotiff.png.
Right-click on the Topo points object, and bring up the property window:
The information on the bounding box gives a good idea for the georeference data setting. We will use the
minimum and maximum x values and the minimum and maximum y values. Let them be denoted by min(x),
max(x), min(y) and max(y) respectively. So min(x)=2481.62, max(x)=5803.34, min(y)=5996.38 and max(y)
=9218.12.
Now we come back to the Import Image dialog. The georeference information is set by assigning a suitable
location to each of three corner points (represented by , , ). Sometimes images can be really big and
you need to zoom in a lot. In that case, pressing the one of the buttons with , , on it (in the
Georeference part of the window) will place that marker in the centre of the current view.
Type in an appropriate location value for each corner as suggested by the following screenshot. The z-value is
not critical as the image will be projected onto the surface at the final stage anyway and the surface happens to
be fairly parallel to the x-y plane. Put z=0 for all three corner points (you can lock a column so using the check-
boxes under the table. A value entered or changed in any row will then be copied in the other rows).
Click OK to dismiss the dialog. The remaining procedure is identical to the case of the GeoTIFF file illustrated
above.
Mapping a Portion of the Image

If you wish to extract a small portion of the image, you can relocate the corner points to define the area to be
extracted. Double-click on terrain_no_geotiff under the Images folder, which opens the Edit Image dialog.
Drag and drop the corner points icons or type a required value in the ImageX and ImageY fields. By setting
them as below, we are extracting the area surrounded by the red rectangle. Click on the OK button to finish
editing. Note that the portion to be extracted does not have to be rectangle. A quadrilateral of any shape can be
nicely extracted.
Display Topo surface (in Flat colour) and terrain_no_geotiff. As shown below, the Topo surface only covers
the area we have earlier specified.
After projecting it onto the surface, you will find that the correct portion of the image is drawn on the surface.
Indeed, the image can be mapped onto any isosurfaces. This is often useful when you have
a geo-referenced cross section diagram. Create a plane mesh by the Creating Mesh from
Moving Plane function, and project the cross-section image onto the mesh.
Distance Buffers Tutorial Page 1 of 12
Distance Buffers Tutorial
Overview
• About the distance interpolant
• How to create distance buffer meshes
• Viewing distance buffer meshes
• How to create a smoothed distance buffer
The Tutorial project must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Distance Buffers Tutorial >
Distance Interpolant
Leapfrog can rapidly determine the distance to the nearest point in an object from anywhere in space. The
function that calculates the minimum distance to a set of points is called a distance interpolant. This
interpolant is used in Leapfrog to do several useful tasks:
1. The isosurface of a distance interpolant is called a buffer mesh, adopting the term buffer from GIS
usage of distance buffer. The buffer mesh outlines where the data is located in space.
2. Any interpolated metal content can be evaluated on the buffer mesh and allows easy identification of
prospective areas that are often beyond the extents of drilling. The topic Creating an Evaluation
explains this in detail.
3. Interpolated values such as metal content can extrapolate indefinitely away from the data points. To
restrict the extrapolation to a limited distance from the data, a distance interpolant can be used to
limit extrapolation to a fixed distance. This topic is covered in the Domaining tutorial.
The main objective of this tutorial is to introduce the minimum distance concept and learn how to generate
buffer meshes.
Creating Distance Buffer Meshes

To make a buffer mesh we must first make a minimum distance interpolant. Minimum distance interpolants
can be made for points objects ( ) and for values ( ) objects.
1. We will create a buffer around the Marvin points. To do this, right-click on the m_assays object in the
Numeric Data folder:
2. The New Distance Interpolant dialog will be displayed allowing you to select an anisotropy, if required.
Distances will be calculated in the anisotropic parameters configured here. We will use an isotropic space
here. Click on the Set to button and select Isotropic.
3. Click OK. If an anisotropic global trend is required, you can retrieve the parameters from the moving
plane (Set From Plane) or from the existing anisotropic spaces (Set to).
4. A folder called Buffers will be created under m_assays containing the newly created minimum distance
interpolant as shown below:
To create a buffer mesh from a minimum distance interpolant, follow the steps below:
1. Right-click on the Distance to m_assays (Isotropic) row in the project tree and select Isosurface:
2. This brings up the Distance Surfaces dialog box. Type 100 in the Threshold column - this is the
distance to the points - and accept the other default settings, as shown below, and click OK:
3. The image below shows the project tree after accepting the settings above:
4. Press Ctrl+Shift+R to run the objects. After processing, the fonts will turn from grey to black. Drag
the m_assays Buffer 100.0 mesh to the scene window. You should be able to see the scene similar to:
Viewing Distance Buffer Meshes

In this section, we describe how to modify viewing of the distance buffer mesh created above.
By default the buffer mesh is displayed with Isosurface colour (as shown in the Display combo box). In this
mode, the entire buffer is displayed in a single colour. Note that not all points on the surface of the buffer
are exactly 100m away from the nearest drillhole. The buffer mesh is clipped by the bounding box, and
points on the intersection can have distance values ranging from 0m to 100m.
We alter the viewing option and adjust the colourmap to visualise the distribution of the distance values.
1. Go to the shape list and change the display mode for m_assays Buffer 100.0 to Distance to m_assays
(Isotropic) from the drop-list.
2. Select Edit Colourmaps from the colourmap dropdown list.
3. Alter the colourmap similar to below.
4. Click the Close button. The colour appearance of the 100m buffer mesh is now transformed to bring out
the distance values that range from 0m (red) to 100m (navy blue), as shown below:
The buffer value of 100m is constant and is indicated by the dark blue colour in the
above view. The shorter distances from data only occur where the clipping box
intersects with the buffer mesh.
Value Distance Buffers
Previously, we created a distance buffer on a points object, m_assays (shown as ). Similarly, a

distance buffer can be obtained for numeric data (a values object such as cu or Au).
In numeric data, some points may not have values. When you make a distance buffer for a values object,
cu for example, points that contain cu values will be processed. On the other hand, when you make a
buffer for a points object, all the points, even those with no values at all, will be processed.
To illustrate this point, we have an extra data file, Marvin_missing_values.csv, where Cu or Au values
are occasionally missing.
1. Right-click on the Numeric Data folder and import the file. Select to import the Cu and Au columns as
both numeric data.
2. Notice that some rows do not have Cu values, whereas some other rows do not have Au values.
3. Click Import. Drag the Marvin_missing_values object into the scene. The scene will display the points
with Au values by default.
4. Notice that only points that have an Au attribute are shown. In the shape list, change the display to Cu.
Only points with a Cu attributes will be displayed.
5. Selecting Flat colour for the display will display all the points that were imported, because the flat colour
display does not depend on the grade of a specific assay type.
6. We will now create a distance interpolant for each of the values Au and Cu. Right-click on Au and Cu,
and select Distance Interpolant. Obtain buffer meshes (i.e. isosurfaces) at 100m from each distance
interpolant, as shown below:
7. Displaying the Au Buffer 100.0 mesh in the scene gives the following result:
8. Whereas displaying the Cu Buffer 100.0 mesh gives:
9. Now consider the isosurface of the distance buffer created from the points object,
Marvin_missing_values ( ). This buffer contains every point regardless of missing values. This is
because this buffer is created regardless of the value of a specific assay type.
Creating a Smoothed Distance Buffer

An alternative to creating a distance buffer from an interpolant is creating a smoothed distance buffer from
points objects ( ) or values ( ) objects. To do this:
1. Right-click on the points or values object and select Smoothed Distance Buffer.
2. In the window that appears, set the required parameters. Here, for a smoothed distance buffer of the
Marvin_missing_values points object, set the Distance to 50, then click OK:
3. Once processing is complete, add the Marvin_missing_values smoothed buffer 50.0 object to the
scene:
4. Compare the resulting buffer with Marvin_missing_values Buffer 100.0:
Note how the smoothed distance buffer produces a smoother surface. The normal distance buffer can
result in distorted surfaces where the distance buffer overlaps around drillholes. The smoothed buffer does
not have that problem and always produces a smooth surface. The disadvantage of using the smoothed
distance buffer is that no interpolant is generated and so the smoothed distance buffer cannot be used for
evaluations.
Evaluation Tutorial Page 1 of 5
Evaluation Tutorial
Overview
• How to evaluate functions on an isosurface
• How to view new evaluations
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial and the

Distance Buffers Tutorial. The tutorial project must be opened prior to
commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Evaluation Tutorial >
Creating an Evaluation
To evaluate is to calculate the value of an interpolant at a particular point in space. An Evaluation
is the result of evaluating an interpolant on the points (vertices) of a mesh.
Evaluations are created by default for many surfaces created in Leapfrog. For example, grade
interpolants are automatically evaluated on the vertices of each grade shell generated from it.
Evaluating the interpolant from which the isosurface was generated allows areas where the
isosurface has been clipped to be easily identified as the colour will change in these areas. Small
variations in the finite resolution mesh from the true iso-value may also be detected by changes in
colour.
A well known analogue of evaluations on meshes in Leapfrog is the Connelly diagram. Geologists
have in the past made use of planar surfaces that also display the contour of metal values. For
example, gold values on a fault can assist in effective interpretation of the data. An Evaluation in
Leapfrog is identical to a Connelly diagram. However, the meshes are not restricted to simple
planar objects, but can be of any geometry.
We will add some evaluations to the grade shells created in the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial.
1. View the Au 0.48 grade shell by dragging it over from the Project pane into the scene. We
choose the Au (Linear Isotropic) display mode in the shape list.
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To carry on this tutorial, make sure you have interpolated the isosurface of Au.
2. To add another evaluation to this isosurface, right-click on Au 0.48 in the project tree and
select Evaluate from the menu.
3. This displays the Evaluations dialog box shown below. This lists all the available
interpolants in the project tree. Interpolants that have already been evaluated on the mesh
have been ticked already. Evaluations may be added or removed by ticking the boxes next
to the required interpolants.
4. Select the Cu (Linear - Isotropic) and Distance to m_assays (Isotropic) interpolants and
click OK.
5. Both evaluation tasks now appear as unprocessed objects in the Project tree, as shown
below:
6. Press Shift+Ctrl+R to run all processing tasks.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Evaluation Tutorial >
Viewing Evaluations
You can view evaluations in several ways. You can drag them from the project tree into the scene.
This will display the parent mesh object and colour it with the evaluation. If the mesh is already in
the scene, evaluations can be selected from the Display column in the Shape List.
The following figures illustrate the Au 0.48 isosurface with different evaluations:
Au 0.48 isosurface displaying Distance to m_assays (Isotropic) values:
Au 0.48 isosurface displaying Cu (Linear - Isotropic) values:
Where the colourmap setting is similar to:
Anisotropic Interpolation Tutorial Page 1 of 9
Anisotropic Interpolation Tutorial
Overview
In this tutorial, you will learn:
• How anisotropic interpolations are performed in Leapfrog
• How to setup anisotropic interpolation parameters
• Natural minimum distance mesh
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Data Viewing Tutorial. The Tutorial

project must be opened prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Anisotropic Interpolation Tutorial >
How Anisotropic Interpolations are Performed in

Leapfrog
Isotropic interpolation, where the interpolation does not depend on the direction, is an excellent
way to objectively view your assay data. It allows effective unbiased interpretation of grade
continuity.
In reality, however, isotropic interpolations rarely represent geologically realistic grade
distributions. In order to accentuate a particular direction, which may be geologically logical, we
allow the interpolation to take the directional bias (a spatial anisotropy) into account.
Anisotropy can be defined using an ellipsoid with three different axial lengths. There are two ways
to impose anisotropy onto the interpolation process:
1. Use a search ellipse to select neighbourhood data points and therefore bias the
interpolation using a local interpolation method. Input parameters are: Ellipse principal axial
lengths and their orientations. Neighbourhood search is needed.
2. Deform the coordinate space, then conduct a global isotropic interpolation in this
transformed space. This is followed by transforming the results back to the original
coordinate space. Input parameters are: Ellipse principal axial ratios and their orientations.
Neighbourhood search is not needed.
The above two methods yield virtually identical results, but utilize contrasting methodologies. Most
resource software products rely on local interpolation methods, therefore the first method is used
almost exclusively. Leapfrog, in contrast, uses a global interpolation method, therefore the second
method is used.
The fact that spatial distortion can be used to model anisotropic grade distributions makes
anisotropic interpolation of data quite simple. All it requires is the user to enter the axial ratio of the
ellipse and its orientation. Distortion of the data is performed once. From then on the processing
steps are identical to the isotropic interpolation outlined in the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial.
Setting Up the Anisotropic Interpolation Parameters
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Follow the steps below to setup an anisotropic interpolation:

1. Right-click on the Cu values under m_assays in the Numeric Data folder and select
Interpolate Values from the menu.
2. Click on the Variogram tab.
3. The ellipsoidal principal directions are defined by specifying the orientation of the plane that
contains the maximum and intermediate axes of the ellipsoid. This plane is usually
identifiable with isotropic interpolation, and is entered in Leapfrog as Dip (0-90°) and Dip
Azimuth (0-360°) values. The mineral lineation within this plane is the maximum direction,
and this value is entered as a Pitch angle (0-180°) from the right-hand strike direction.
4. An easy way to enter this maximum-intermediate (max-int) plane is to use the moving plane
described in the Data Viewing Tutorial. This dialog provides a short-cut to view the moving
plane. Click the View Plane button as shown in the picture above. Play with the plane to
make it parallel to the plane of mineralization. An example of a rotated moving plane in the
scene window is shown below:
4. The dip, dip-azimuth and pitch values can be transferred to the dialog box by the Set From
Plane button. The dip, dip-azimuth and pitch values from the moving plane are copied into
the dialog box.
5. When the Set From Plane button is clicked, default values for the ellipsoid ratios are
automatically assigned (Max=3, Int=3, Min=1). The Ellipsoid ratios can be input from range
anisotropies obtained from 3D variograms (outside Leapfrog), but otherwise a guess value
can be used. For this tutorial, set Maximum, Intermed., Mininum to 4, 2, 1.
6. The dialog should look similar to the one below. Click OK.
7. The project now includes a purple ellipse indicating the anisotropic distortion of space. The
numbers on right of this icon are the anisotropic settings. Below this are the interpolant and
default grade shells.
8. Run the newly created objects with Shift+Ctrl+R or press the Run All button.
Geographic and Natural Buffers

A given minimum distance value in geographic coordinates is the same distance from a point in
any direction. A minimum distance iso-surface about a point is therefore a sphere. This isotropic
minimum distance is referred to as the Geographic Minimum Distance.
Minimum distance values for an anisotropic interpolation is measured in the transformed space
related to the anisotropy specified by the user in the Interpolation and Surface Parameters
dialog box. These distances are constant in all directions in the warped space, but not constant
when transformed back into geographic space. When an isosurface is generated in geographic
space, it looks like an ellipsoid with the same axial ratio as the anisotropy ellipse specified by the
user. These anisotropic minimum distances are referred to as Natural Minimum Distances as they
mimic the more natural equal-confidence distances that are characteristic of anisotropic mineral
distributions.
The image below shows the geographic minimum distance to a point in red and the natural
minimum distance ellipsoid to the same point in blue respectively. They both represent iso-
distances in their respective coordinate space around a single point.
Isotropic and anisotropic minimum distance ellipsoids with identical

distance values have the same volume.
Creating a natural minimum distance buffer involves steps similar to the Distance Buffers Tutorial.
To create one for cu, right-click on it and select Distance Interpolant from the menu.
Select the anisotropy settings we used for the Cu interpolation from the Set to drop-down list as
shown below and select the anisotropic setting created during the anisotropic interpolation.
The new minimum distance interpolant appears in the Buffers folder under Cu. Right-click on the
interpolant and select Isosurface from the menu.
Type 100 in the Threshold column and click OK to create a buffer mesh. Run the process and
drag the new isosurface, cu Buffer 100.0 into the scene.
Select the Distance to cu (35.037, 89.256, 90; 4:2:1) display mode in the shape list:
Make an alteration to the colourmap. If you select the first gradient and click the From Evaluation
button in the Edit Colourmap dialog, you will see a scene similar to this.
Natural minimum distance interpolants, like any other interpolant, can also be evaluated on any
other surface. Right-click on the anisotropic Cu 0.61 mesh and select Evaluate from the menu.
Select the Distance to Cu (35.037, 89.256, 90; 4:2:1) interpolant from the tree and click OK.
Display the result of this evaluation on the anisotropic Cu 0.61 mesh with Distance to cu
(35.6,99.6,76.1;4:2:1) display mode. Configure the colourmap appropriately to obtain a scene
similar to:
Notice that the area close to the drillhole are shown "hot" (dark red).
These natural minimum distance meshes are particularly useful when geographic distances buffers
leave undesirable holes between drillholes. This is particularly useful when the drillhole spacing
along the mineralization is much larger than across the mineralization. In such cases the natural
minimum distance meshes will join the buffer meshes around drillholes that are wide apart, thus
ideal for resource estimation use.
Interpolation with Structural Trend Tutorial Page 1 of 10
Interpolation with Structural Trend Tutorial
Overview
Lithological formations are rarely flat, often containing folds and bends. However geological modelling
packages can only model inside areas of flat, constant trends. In Leapfrog, however, varying structural
trends can follow folds and bends. This has led to a slight change in terminology: Anisotropy is now referred
to as a Global Trend. Varying structural trend is sometimes referred to as a Local Trend.
• Creating and viewing a structural trend
• Interpolate with the structural trend
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Interpolation with Structural Trend Tutorial >
Creating a Structural Trend

A structural trend is defined by one or more meshes. In this example, we will create a mesh from a polyline.
Importing a Polyline
This tutorial uses a pre-defined polyline saved in tutorials\Marvin\trend.csv
Right-click on the Polylines folder in the project tree, and import this file.
When the Polyline Import dialog appears, simply click on the Import button to proceed.
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After import and processing is complete, find that the trend Surface has been created under the Polylines
folder in the project tree.
Right-click on trend Surface and select View to display the polyline surface. Add the m_assay table to the
scene.
The polyline surface can be extended by enlarging the bounding box constraining the surface.
Double-click on the trend Surface and change the Bounding Box setting to m_assays.
Running the process and re-displaying gives:
Creating a Structural Trend
When the Structural Trend dialog appears, click on the Add button.
Among the meshes currently available, select trend Surface and click OK to proceed.
When the Structural Trend dialog re-appears, set the Strength and Range parameters to 5.0 and 100.0
respectively. Leave the Trend Type as it is for now (default is Strongest along meshes).
Structural trends create a flat ellipsoid anisotropy that varies in direction with the mesh. The Strength
parameter determines the shape of the ellipsoid; major and intermediate radii are determined by the
Strength parameter and the minimum radius is fixed at 1, with the plane tangent to the mesh. The Range
parameter indicates how far the influence of this mesh reaches.
Type trend for the name of this structural trend, and click OK to proceed.
Notice that the trend now appears under the Structural Trends folder in the Project tree.
Drag the trend into the scene. It should look something like this:
The trend is shown using discs placed on a regular grid. The orientation of the disc gives the direction of the
anisotropy. The size of a disc is proportional to the anisotropy strength. Where there are no discs (or the
size is very small) the trend is isotropic. You will notice that the strength weakens further away from the
mesh.
If the Trend Type was set to Non-decaying in the Structural Trend dialog above,
the distance from the mesh no longer affects the anisotropy and all discs have the
same size.
The Blending option requires multiple trends and blend them. A trend with higher
strength makes a stronger impact on the blending. The blended trend is of
decaying-type, and its strength weakens further away from the mesh.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Interpolation with Structural Trend Tutorial >
Interpolation Settings
Start the Interpolation by right-clicking on cu under Numeric values in the project tree.
It is also possible to use a structural trend for interpolating a boundary data.

However, undesirable artefacts may occur beyond the range specified (one of
variogram parameters). You may need to constrain the result of the isosurfaces
using domains. Using a structural trend interpolation for boundary is illustrated in
Interpolating Volume Points
In the Variogram tab, select the radio button for the Structural Trend and select trend from the dropdown-
list.
For the Structural Trend, only Spheroidal and Generalised Cauchy variogram models are supported.
In this particular example, considering the typical distance between two drillholes, a relatively large value for
the range parameter will be appropriate. Let us try 100 for the Range here.
After running the process, the surface of cu 0.61 should look like the following image. Note that this surface
was obtained with the trend with parameters Strength=5.0 and Range= 100.0.
Compare this with an isosurface of cu 0.61 with the identical Variogram parameters (Spheroidal, range=
100) shown below.
Structural Trend Parameters

Let us investigate how the different parameter setting in the Structural Trend window affects the
interpolated surface.
Strength = 20.0, Range= 100.0

When higher value for the Strength is used (we keep the Range unchanged), the directional bias becomes
more apparent.
Strength = 20.0, Range= 5.0

If we lower the Range with the same Strength as above, the surface tends to contract as shown below.
Structural Measurements Tutorial Page 1 of 16
Structural Measurements Tutorial
Overview
Leapfrog can generate surfaces representing structural features directly from structural data and outcrop data. The generation of fault planes, folds,
bedding and foliation planes and other structurally related features is possible using either points or polylines and structural data or directly from the
structural data points themselves.
The following topics will be covered in this section:

• Importing and viewing structural measurements
• Editing the data
• Creating a sub-table based on a selection of structural measurements
• Adding new structural data points
• Modeling fault planes, folds, bedding planes by creating structural surfaces
• Visualizing the form field by creating form surfaces
• Creating a structural trend from structural measurements
General
The structural surface tools allow you to create surfaces directly from structural measurements that honor both the trends of structural measurements
and any point sets or lines that represent the structural surface, such as outcrops of fault traces, fold hinge lines and bedding or foliation planes. There
are two separate tools to use structural measurements. The structural surface tool is designed to build up individual structural surfaces from structural
data. The form surface tool is designed to investigate structural data that represents non-discrete surfaces or structural features such as cleavage
planes, foliation measurements, fracture sets, jointing and other data that is often distributed and dense.
The following tutorial outlines how to import and clean structural data within Leapfrog and how to view structural data within the scene. It then outlines
how to split structural data tables up so that, for example, individual categories or single measurements can be modelled. The main two methods of
modelling with structural measurements are then explored and the application of structural data to local trends explained. Finally, steps for exporting
structural data are outlined.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Structural Measurements Tutorial >
Importing and Viewing Structural Data
Importing
In the project tree, there is a folder called Structural Data.
Right-click on the folder and select Import Structural Data to select a CSV file (or other text file):
First a file selection dialog will appear. After a file is selected and Open is clicked, the actual data import dialog will appear.
This dialog assumes the following columns are present: X, Y, Z, Dip and Dip-Azimuth. There are also two optional columns: Polarity and Category.
The polarity option will be covered later in more detail. The Category column can be used to specify the type of structural measurements, e.g. foliation
or overturned fold limb. This can be useful for filtering once the data has been imported.
The import assumes a header line and tries to use that line to automatically select the correct columns. Columns will appear white if automatic
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selection failed when the header was not recognized. Columns that are not recognized will have a title ”Not imported”. Click on the header to set it to
the correct label. Use the same method when columns are incorrectly labeled. If no header is detected at all it might be required to uncheck the first
row to prevent it from being imported as data (see below).
The Include column allows selection of specific rows that you want to import. Use control+click and/or shift+click to select multiple lines. Press the tick
box in the include column to select/de-select rows.
When finished, press the Import button to start the import.
The data will appear in the Structural Data folder as a table.
Viewing
Double-click the table to edit the table or drag the object into the scene to view the contents:
Changing Disc Size and Shape

When structural data is visible in the scene and selected in the scene list, the size and shape can be altered in the right-bottom corner. The shape is
determined by the number of sides used to create the shape.
The minimum is 3, which will make the shape a triangle. Adding a point will change it to a square. Further increasing the number will slowly change it
into a disc. The default is 16, creating a disc. The radius can be controlled by adjusting the Disk radius.
Colouring
When structural measurements are displayed in the scene, their colours can be adjusted. Do this by changing the colouring to either, dip, azimuth or
category.
Only the flat colour will show the polarity.
Editing the Data
Fixing Errors
If the data set contained duplicate points (or measurements nearly at the same location) or other erroneous data (e.g. missing values), the icon in the
tree will appear with a red cross. Rows with errors will be discarded from further processing.
To find and fix errors, right-click on the icon and select Fix Errors.
The dialog that pops up will show you the type of errors found and allows you to fix them. Refer to the Fixing Errors in Drillhole Data topic.
Manipulating the Data

To modify the imported data, you can directly access the table by double-clicking on it. You can edit values in this table in a similar manner to other
tables (see Table Dialog topic). Be aware that values in the polarity column should be +1 (default) or -1.
You can also change polarity or ignore a point in the scene. To do this:
1. Add the structural data table to the scene.
2. In the shape list, click on the edit icon:
The Structural Data window and toolbar will appear in the scene:
To edit a point, click on the arrow button, then on the point in the scene. The values associated with that point will be displayed in the Structural Data
window:
Click to select (multiple) measurements: use control + clicking for multiple selections, or without control for single selection.
When a point is selected, you can choose to ignore it by clicking the Ignore point option in the Structural Data window. In this case, several points are
selected and will be ignored if Ignore points is ticked:
Similarly, you can reverse the polarity. The colours of measurements in the scene will be swapped when polarity is changed and Flat colour is
selected.
Use the undo/redo buttons to correct mistakes
When done, click the Save button to save the changes.

Ignored data points are still visible but grayed out when in edit mode. This allows you to easily change your mind.
Polarity
Polarity
When structural data is added to the scene, by default the shapes have a blue side and a red side to show the polarities. Polarity is an important
concept in Leapfrog; it is a generalization of an "overturned" bedding measurement and can be applied to all surfaces generated from structural
measurements and polylines. Incorrect polarity can result in significantly different surfaces. Here, for an overturned geology, the two triangles have
opposing polarities:
However, if the polarity of one of the two triangles is incorrectly set, the resulting surface does not overturn where it should:
This diagram illustrates two structural bedding measurements taken on a vertical section:
There are four possible combinations of younging direction (shown as arrows) on these measurements, which produce four different surfaces,
indicated by the dashed lines:
Figures (a) and (d) are the same shape, as are (b) and (c). However, in figures (a) and (b), the rocks are younger toward the top of the diagram. This
difference is conveyed visually in Leapfrog by colouring one side of the surface, structural measurement or polyline blue and the other red, as
illustrated below:
There are other situations where the orientation of a structural measurement is entirely arbitrary. In the illustration above, the structural measurements
are taken in plan and correspond to measurements along a fault. There is no real correspondence of the structural measurements to a defined quantity
such as the younging direction. Either (a) or (d) would be suitable for generating the fault shape. What matters in this case is that the structural
measurements used to generate the surface are consistent. This can be achieved by ensuring that all structural measurements of the same polarity
point to the same side of the surface.
If, however, the fault is used in further processing, e.g. to define the boundary of a domain, polarity will still be important as it is used to define which
side is to be kept (see the Domaining tutorial).
Create Sub-Table from Filter

In Leapfrog, you can select a sub-group of measurements by creating sub-tables. Each sub-table acts as if it was directly imported except for the fact
that you cannot create a sub-table from a sub-table. This way it is a lot easier to extract and compare foliation with cleavage measurements.
To create a sub-table, right-click on the table and select New Structural Selection:
This will bring up a dialog similar to query filters:
The drop-down will show you the previously created filters, as shown here. The button can help to build a query. See the Drillhole Data Import
Tutorial or the New Query Filter and Query Filter topics in the Reference Manual.
Adding New Structural Data Points

You can add new structural data points to a table. To do this:
1. Add the structural data table to the scene.
2. In the shape list, click on the edit icon:
The Structural Data window and toolbar will appear in the scene:
To add a point, click on the new point icon:
Click on the Draw on objects button, then click and drag in the scene to add the new point. When you add a new point, it appears in the scene as
shown below, with the information displayed in the Structural Data window:
Once you have drawn a point in the scene, use the fields in the Structural Data window to change its location, Dip and Azimuth.
When you have added all the points required, click the Save button to save the changes.
Modeling with Structural Data

Structural data can be used to generate two different types of surfaces:
1. Structural surfaces (generated from a structural interpolant). These are surfaces that honour specified points and/or polylines as well as structural
measurements.
2. Form surfaces (generated from form interpolants). These are a family of surfaces that represent the form field of the the structural measurements.
The next two sections explain their functionality in detail.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Structural Measurements Tutorial > Modeling with Structural Data >
Structural Surfaces
Structural surfaces are generated from either a point set (which can include the original structural measurement locations) and/or a polyline. The
structural measurements are used to guide the form of the surface. This could be a surface outcrop of a fault where the trace has been imported as a
polyline or point set and several structural measurements made of the fault strike and dip. The surface outcrop provides the spatial description of the
fault location and the strike and dip data provide a guide for the orientation and gradient of the fault surface at the locations where the measurements
were made. The structural measurement point locations could also be applied as a further constraint to the fault surfaces location.
A structural interpolant requires a point set and/or polyline to constrain the surface within 3D space and at a minimum of one structural measurement.
The structural measurements themselves can be selected as the points as well. If there are many structural measurements, it is important to select
representative measurements for the surface to be modelled. Erroneous measurements or unrealistic measurements (such as reverse polarity or very
sharp local changes in orientation or gradient) will lead to geologically unrealistic surfaces. By cleaning data to gather a subset of the most certain and
best representative measurements, a much more geologically sound surface will be generated. Also important to remember is that the influence of the
structural measurement on the surface is greatest close to the measurement’s location. This can be changed by applying an anisotropy, which will be
further explained in the next section. Once the points and/or polyline are selected, the surface is generated. If multiple point sets are required, they can
be merged into one object prior to the creation of the structural interpolant.
Example: Murchison Data (courtesy of GNS Science)

In this example, we will use the structural measurements for the Murchison basin in New Zealand. The topography is draped on a Digital Elevation
Model and we selected the structural measurements corresponding to the Longford formation. For this example we outlined the region using a polyline.
Normal ribbons are turned on for orientation purposes. The topography is slightly transparent for improved visibility of the structural measurements.
To model this syncline we right-click the structural measurements and select structural interpolant:
The dialog that opens next allows for a polyline and or a point set to be selected:
The points and polylines are used as guides to model the surface of interest. Before we continue, some more information regarding the use of polylines
and points.
Polylines With and Without Normals

Polyline objects consist of points, lines or a mixture of both. Points and lines are treated differently, and it is recommended that the user draw
a line rather than points if the polyline represents a boundary. There is also the option to select Use point normals.
Polyline points are treated just as points, as the surface is generated through these locations. If the Use point normals option is selected,
then the normal of the points are used as structural measurements. This can be useful if you know the approximate orientation of the surface
to be modelled at the polyline location.
Polyline lines are treated as a boundary, so the orientation of the normal ribbon is important. If the Use point normals option is selected,
then the tangent planes will be used as structural measurements.
Care must be taken when using polylines and polyline points and Use point normals is selected. For structural measurements the dip and strike
information is used to define a local plane, represented by the discs in the scene. Leapfrog uses the strike and dip information to create normals for
each plane, i.e. the vectors perpendicular to the disc surface. The direction of the normal defines the disc’s polarity and this is reflected by the disc’s
red and blue sides.
Polyline points with normals also have a polarity and, therefore, to get the correct surface output, care must be taken to match the normals on points to
the polarity of the structural measurements (unless required for the model).
When using lines in the polyline tool, the tangent planes are essentially the same as the structural measurement discs. The normal ribbon to the
polyline tangent plane represents the polarity and, therefore, has a red and blue side, the same as that of the structural measurement discs. For lines,
the polarity needs to be set correctly of whether or not Use point normals is selected. For lines, setting the check determines if the tangents are used
as structural measurements as well, or, if unchecked, only for polarity orientation.
Failure to match the polyline polarity with that of the structural measurements can result in rather unexpected surfaces, as shown below:
If we zoom in on the polarities of the polyline and structural measurements, we can see they are not oriented identically. The colours of the discs facing
the camera are not the same as the colours of the polyline normal ribbons closest to the camera.
To fix this problem refer to Basic Drawing Techniques under Flip Polyline.
Point Sets
Point sets may be a series of drillhole contact locations or points on a modelled surface. Point sets are often less accurate for the generation of
structural measurements and it may be better to digitise the points with a polyline if the results using just points are undesirable, as shown below:
This is an extreme example, but in most circumstances, point sets by themselves will produce nice results without the need to digitise points. The
selected point set can be any object with location information: numeric data, collar data, merged objects, structural measurements etc. When using a
structural data set both for the dip and strike information and as a locations object, beware that ignored rows will only apply to the dip and strike
information. The point information will still be used to define the structural surface.
Importance of Anisotropy
Anisotropy can be critical to achieving required results during structural surface modeling. It can be applied to help guide the surface and change the
influence or strength that particular structural measurements have on the surface. The stronger the anisotropy the greater the influence of the structural
measurements on the direction of the anistropic plane. An example of the use of anisotropy is to help generate a geologically realistic fold. By applying
the anisotropic trend along the axial plane of the fold with the strongest axis of anisotropy focused in downwards from the hinge line between the fold
limbs as shown (topography is turned off to show the fold axial plane and the moving plane used to create the anisotropy).
Often applying an intermediate axis of anisotropy in the hinge line trend direction can help to form a more cylindrical fold. By varying the amounts of
anisotropy applied, different interlimb angles can be generated, changing folds from gentle (low anisotropy) to isoclinals (high anisotropy). For plunging
folds, applying a plunging anisotropic trend will help to generate a more realistic fold. Adding extra sections to the polyline used or more points can also
help to guide the fold surface. By applying anisotropy along the axial plane orientation and dip, a recumbent fold can be modelled.
This results in the following:
If we then create a domain to clip this result with the topography we get:
Known limitations of structural measurements

If trying to generate a fault or structural surface that has the same gradient and orientation across the whole surface, it may
be better to use the mesh from moving plane. As the influence of individual measurements decreases with distance from
the measurement, a single measurement will not influence the whole surfaces gradient and orientation. Place the moving
plane in the scene and set the dip and dip azimuth of the plane based on the fault surface dip and dip azimuth structural
measurement. Adjust the plane size to the that required for the fault surface and then right-click on the Meshes folder and
select Mesh From Moving Plane. This can be applied to generating a structural-based surface of any size, dip and dip
azimuth, such as a dip domain patch or bedding plane.
The table needs at least 2 valid measurements.
When a structural surface is first generated, it is important to check the size of its bounding box as it is based on the
bounding box of the structural measurements. Often this will need to be expanded horizontally and vertically to generate
the required structural surface. Refer to Bounding Boxes in the Reference Manual for more information on adjusting the
bounding box size.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Structural Measurements Tutorial > Modeling with Structural Data >
Form Surfaces
Form surfaces are different in that they do not honour any point set or polyline location and are generated within a bounding box at defined intervals.
The structural measurements are used to generate a form field in which each measurement exerts a level of influence that decreases with distance
from the measurement. When surfaces are generated through the structural data, they highlight trends in the gradient and orientation (dip and dip
azimuth) of the structural measurements without honouring the measurements exact locations. This allows for investigating a large number of discrete
structural measurements such as a series of cleavage or other foliation measurements. It would not be possible to model each cleavage plane
individually but by using a form interpolant, you can visually see the changes in orientation and gradient of the cleavage planes throughout that are
being investigated. The form surfaces or the form interpolant itself can then be directly used to generate a local trend for grade modelling.
Structural data can be used to create form surfaces directly. To create form surfaces, right-click the item in the tree and select Form Interpolant. In the
window that appears, set the global trend either manually or from the moving plane:
The Nugget value indicates how accurately the form surface needs to honour the measurements.
On the Surfaces tab, a number of surfaces can be created. The threshold value is the main variable to play with.
Threshold
When creating form surfaces, three are added to the list by default. One will have a threshold 0.0. This means the surface will roughly be created in the
middle of the selected bounding box. The other two are based on the size of the bounding box of the structural measurements and are created at an
equal distance either side of the 0.0 threshold surface. The threshold indicates distance in the form field from the mid-point of the bounding box.
Finding the correct value depends on the data and needs to be found by trial and error.
Structural Measurements in Trends
Structural Trends
As shown in the Interpolation with Structural Trend tutorial, a structural trend can also be made from the form surfaces. However, without the
intervening steps of creating a surface, a structural trend can be directly created from the structural measurements.
Note that tables that contain errors will not be displayed in the list.
Exporting Structural Measurements
Export
Structural data can be exported just like other tables. This provides an easy way to share data between projects without the need to clean the data
again. (See the Export Tutorial for general information on exporting data).
Tables that were imported without a polarity column will on export have that column added.
Drawing in 3D Page 1 of 24
Drawing in 3D
Drawing in Leapfrog is not restricted to section planes. You can draw anywhere in 3D using polylines.
In this tutorial, you will learn:
• How to draw a fault using polylines.
• How to import polylines from other packages into Leapfrog.
Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Data Viewing Tutorial and the Topography Tutorial.
The tutorial project must be opened prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Drawing in 3D >
Basic Drawing Techniques

Display the topography surface and the Marvin grade in the scene We have set the opacity of the topography
surface to about 0.5 and the colour of it to light blue.
To draw a new polyline, click on the button on the main toolbar or right-click the Polylines folder in the
project tree, then select New Polyline.
Type myPolyline in the Name text-box and press Enter or click OK.
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The drawing toolbar will appear to the left of the scene window as shown below.
A polyline object is listed in the shape list with a number of options. You may wish to turn on/off the drawing
toolbar, change the colour, turn on/off the surface ribbons, normal ribbons and tangent planes.
Drawing Straight Line Segments
Click the Draw Lines / Curves button ( ). Note that the button is selected, this means that you are
drawing on the surface of an object (mesh or points). We will be drawing a polyline on the topography surface
this time. If you wish to draw on the slicer plane, select the button.
When you are drawing on a mesh, it is a good idea to turn on the "show edges" option ( ) of the mesh. In
the following example, we will be turning on this option of the topography mesh.
Position the mouse pointer on the surface of the mesh and when the mouse pointer turns to , a straight
line will appear between the current mouse pointer position and the last node you placed. This is the preview of
the polyline segment. If you are happy with the preview, click the left button. Right-click will discard the current
preview of a segment. To terminate a polyline, click twice at the last node. The mouse pointer indicates
you will be terminating a polyline when you click the mouse button.
The following table summarises the meaning of some frequent mouse cursors.
Cursor Meaning
You can place a node here. Note that you are only allowed to draw a node at the triangle vertex in
mode.
You can't place a node here. Often occurs when you attempt to draw off the object surface (in
mode) or off the slicer (in ) mode.
Continue drawing from this node and extend the polyline.
Finish drawing this polyline here. Next node you draw will not form a line from this node.
Join two separate polylines.
Finish drawing this polyline here, and this polyline is closed. A polyline is closed when it forms a cycle.
Your viewing angle is not good for drawing.
If the drawing not-ok cursor will not switch to the drawing ok cursor (even if your
mouse pointer appears to be on the mesh surface), try looking at the scene from a different
angle or try zoom in/out. At a certain zoom level or from a certain viewing angle, it might be
easier to draw on the mesh surface
Drawing Curve Segments

Position the mouse pointer where you wish to place a node. If you click and release the button, you will end up
with a straight line segment. This time, do not release the button, but drag the mouse while the left mouse
button pressed down. Note that the curve will not necessarily lie on the surface of the mesh. The colour of the
tangent line is defined by the control colour.
When a curve segment is drawn, the subsequent segment will be a curve too. Its tangent line is opposite to the
tangent line of the previous curve segment.
Editing a Curve
In Select / Navigation mode ( ), press ctrl key and click on the terminal node of the tangent line, then
drag the mouse and release where you get the required tangent line.
The tangent line is symmetric with respect to the node in between. Thus a change to one half of the tangent
line thus updates the other half, and both curve segments are updated.
Converting a Line into a Curve
In Select / Navigation mode ( ), press Alt key and click on the node that lies between two line segments
that you wish to convert into a curve. Drag the mouse and define a tangent line.
The tangent line is created between the node and the position you release the button. Two line segments on
both sides are then converted into a curve based on this tangent line.
Deleting a Segment
Choose Select / Navigation mode ( ) and click on one segment that you wish to delete. Press ctrl key
while each segment is selected if multiple segments are to be deleted at a time. When the segment is selected,
it will be highlighted. Double-click if you wish to highlight the entire polyline. By clicking on the Delete icon ( )
on the drawing toolbar or pressing Delete key, the selected segment is deleted.
Moving a Node
In Select / Navigation mode ( ), press ctrl key and drag a node and drop at a new location to move a
node. The line or curve will be automatically updated.
If a node is moved around while in draw on slicer mode( ), the node will be relocated
to a place on the plane where it was originally drawn. If the slicer plane has been
moved after the node was drawn on it, an attempt to move the node will position it to
a new location on the original slicer plane.
Surface Ribbon
Turn on the Surface Ribbon ( ) of the polyline object in the Shape list. The Surface Ribbon is used to
determine which side of the surface is "inside" and which is "outside".
When Ribbon width is appropriately set (the maximum is 100), you will have a scene similar to below. The red
and blue sides correspond to the positive and negative sides respectively.
Normal Ribbon
Turn on the Normal Ribbon by clicking on the icon. This ribbon is perpendicular to the Surface Ribbon.
To clarify the relations between two ribbons, the polyline above has been slightly modified. Turn off the Topo
Surface for now.
Flip Polyline
Select the entire polyline by double-clicking on it. The button becomes available in the toolbar, which is
used flip the polyline.
Undo ( ) the polyline flipping before proceeding to the next step.
Save Polyline
When the polyline drawing and editing is complete, click on the Save icon( ). This automatically triggers
computing the polyline surface, myPolyline Surface. This will be located under the polyline myPolyline when
the computation is complete.
Display the myPolyline Surface and you will get a scene similar to below. Note that this is an extrapolation
from the surface ribbon.
Tangent Plane
Turn back on the Topo Surface. Notice that the myPolyline Surface is gently dipping down.
Suppose that we wish to get the myPolyline Surface to be almost perpendicular to the Topo Surface, ie. the
myPolyline Surface dipping (almost) straight down.
Turn on the Tangent Plane by clicking on the icon, and reduce the opacity of the myPolyline Surface
slightly. They are the planes that "just touch" the surface. We can change the orientation of each tangent
plane, which will effectively change the shape of the myPolyline Surface.
Press D to look down. Click on the left-most tangent plane and highlight it.
Notice that this enables the icon in the drawing toolbar. This button sets the selected tangent plane parallel
to the view. Since the current view is "Looking down", the result of clicking on icon will be similar to the
below. Notice that the tangent plane is almost invisible as it is now parallel to the viewing angle.
In the similar manner, align the remaining three tangent planes with the view.
Click on the Save button( ) to obtain the updated myPolyline Surface. Note that this surface is now dipping
straight down.
Drawing a Fault Using Polylines

We will define a fault by first drawing a strike line on the topography surface and then drawing some dip lines
using the slicing plane.
Start a new polyline fault.
Turn on the display of Topo Surface (colour set to yellow) and m_assays and press D to look down. We will
be drawing a curve on the Topo Surface.
Draw a polyline composed of a few points. Make sure that the polyline is properly terminated. Here is our strike
line:
Now click on the (Save Polyline) button to save the changes to the project. The polyline surface will be
automatically computed and will be oriented to be perpendicular to the viewing angle, the angle you were
looking along while drawing the polyline (straight down, in this case).
The polyline surface can be extended by enlarging the bounding box constraining the surface. Double-click on
the fault Surface in the Project tree and change the bounding box to the one around the m_assays point data
as shown below.
Running the isosurface and re-displaying gives:
We will now elaborate the polyline by adding some dip lines to it.
Use the slicer ( button) to draw a slicer line along the polyline drawn on the Topo Surface. Adjust the
orientation such that the slicer plane is tilted as shown below.
Click on the button in the drawing toolbar, to enable drawing on the slicer plane. Draw a curve or line
starting near the strike line to define the dip line as shown below.
Before we proceed further, we need to check if the dip lines have consistent orientation. The orientation of each
curve is used to determine which side of the surface is "positive" and which is "negative". Turn on the Surface
Ribbon by clicking the button. Notice that the surface ribbon of each dip line is perpendicular to the slicer,
which is not what we want. In this example, we want the fault more or less to resemble the slicer plane with one
gentle bend following the shape of the strike line we drew on the topography surface. In other words, we want
the surface ribbon of each dip line to be more or less lying on the slicer.
Double-click on one of the dip line to highlight it. This also enables the last 3 actions ( , and ).
Rotate the view such that your viewing angle aligns with the slicer plane as shown below. Click on the
button to set the surface of the dip line parallel to the view. Also flip the dip line if necessary by the button.
We want the left side of the slicing plane to be positive side.
When both the dip lines have been correctly oriented, press the (Save Polyline) button and examine the
surface.
Now rotate the slicer so that it would be parallel with the bended portion of the fault Surface. Changing Dip
and Dip az. values is a quick way of rotating the slicer. Hold down the Ctrl key and right-drag the mouse up
and down to move the slicing plane such that it would lie close to the bended portion of the polyline.
Draw some more dip lines on this slicer, and correct their orientations following the similar steps explained
above.
When all the dip lines have been correctly oriented, press the (Save Polyline) button. We expect to see the
fault plane similar to below.
You can rotate the view while drawing by holding down the Shift key an left-
dragging the mouse in the scene.
See also the Drawing Commands topic in the Reference Manual.
Importing Polylines
Leapfrog can import polylines from many formats including:
• Datamine (*.asc)
• Surpac String (*.str)
• Gemcom (*.asc)
• Micromine (*.asc, *.str)
• MineSight (*.srg)
• FracSIS (*.txt)
• Gocad (*.pl, *.ts)
• AutoDesk DXF (*.dxf)
• Leapfrog (*.csv, *.txt)
To import a polyline right-click on the Polylines folder and select Import from the menu, or from the Project
menu select Project > Import > Polylines. Navigate to the Marvin tutorial directory SampleData\Marvin. and
open the file sz1.asc:
The Polyline Import dialog will then display as shown below.
The shear zone polyline is in North, East, Elev format which the importer has not picked up correctly. Click on
the column headers to interchange the East (X) and North (Y) column assignments as shown below and click
Import.
The polyline will appear in the Polylines folder of the project tree as shown below.
Under the polyline is an object called sz1 Off Surface Values. This is the data Leapfrog generates to
interpolate between the polylines. They are exposed so that they may be used with the Merge Locations
command and may be ignored most of the time. Under that is the RBF interpolant and then the polyline
surface.
Before running these objects we need to check the polylines are oriented consistently. To do this display the
sz1 polyline in the scene and click the Surface Ribbon button ( ) to switch to ribbons mode as shown
below.
It is now clear that the second curve from the top is inside out compared to the others. Double-click on the
green line in the middle of the polyline and click the button to flip the polyline.
Save the changes to the polyline by clicking the (Save Polyline) button, which triggers the polyline surface
computation. The shear zone surface is displayed in the scene automatically.
Importing GIS Shape Files

Leapfrog can import GIS shape files to create a polyline from the data in the shape file. Be aware that you will
not be able to select a subset of the data imported, so if you wish to use a subset of the data in the shape file,
you will need to edit the file in a GIS package before importing it.
To import a GIS shape file, right-click on the Polylines folder and select Import. Navigate to the folder
containing the shape file, select the file and click Open. If the file does not appear, be sure the file type is set to
either Shape Files (*.shp) or All Files (*.*):
Once you click Open, Leapfrog will start importing the file. Once complete, the new polyline will appear in the
project tree under the Polylines folder. If the shape file contains elevation information, a surface will be
generated, which will appear under the polyline object.
Editing a Surface
If you have used a series of points to create a surface and wish to correct areas where there is no data, you
can use a polyline to fill in the empty area. Leapfrog will then merge the polyline with the surface to generate a
new surface.
To edit a surface in this manner:
1. Add the surface you wish to correct to the scene.
2. Right-click on the surface you wish to correct and select Edit With Polyline. A new object will be created in
the Boundaries folder based on the object you selected. A polyline object will also be added to the
Polylines folder and will appear in the scene, together with the tools needed for drawing a polyline.
3. Draw the polyline, then save it.
Leapfrog will merge the polyline with the surface and generate a new surface, which will appear in the
Boundaries folder.
Domaining Tutorial Page 1 of 13
Domaining Tutorial
Overview
• Using topography and data distance functions to define a domain
• Restricting isosurfaces using a domain
• Selecting points using a domain
The prerequisites to this tutorial are the Distance Buffers Tutorial and Drawing in 3D
Tutorial. The tutorial project must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this
tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Domaining Tutorial >
Creating a Domain
Before creating a domain, we will first make a 150m distance buffer mesh and a 0.4% Au grade shell.
Navigate to Distance to m_assays (Isotropic). Right-click on it and select Isosurface from the menu. Click
the New button and set the threshold to 150 and Exact Intersection to Off. Click OK and run the isosurface.
To add another grade shell double-click on one of the Au Rbf (Linear - Isotropic) grade shells (isosurfaces).
Click the New button and set the threshold to 0.4, then click OK and run the isosurface.
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View the new grade shell and the topography in the scene and observe that the grade shell protrudes above
the topography surface. Also, the grade shell extends into a region where there is no data, and in some
circumstances this may be unreasonable, geologically.
We want to constrain the grade surfaces to within 150m distance as well as below the topography. This is
achieved by first creating a domain and then using that domain to restrict the grade shell.
To create a domain right-click on the Domains folder in the project tree and select Define Domain from the
menu.
This brings up the Define Domain dialog. To add boundaries to the domain click the Add button.
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This displays the Select Volume Functions dialog as shown below. We want to restrict the grade shells to be
below the topography and within 150m from the data, so we select both the Topo and the Distance to
m_assays (Isotropic) interpolants (hold down the Ctrl key while selecting multiple items).
Click OK. The selected functions will then be shown in the list. Set the Threshold for the distance interpolant
to 150. As we want to include points "inside" the distance interpolant, it is " 150". Do not close the dialog just
yet.
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Topography and boundary meshes always have a threshold of 0.0 by default, so the Threshold for the
topography is correct. We now need to decide whether we want Topo 0 or Topo 0. Let's look at the Topo
Surface row in the Shape List, while keeping the dialog open.
When it is displayed with Flat colour mode, there are two colour swatches. If the second swatch is disabled,
both sides of the mesh will be displayed with the same colour defined by the first colour swatch.
To enable the second swatch, tick the small box affixed to it. Now each side is coloured differently. Notice that
the side facing up is coloured yellow, whereas the other side facing down is coloured grey. This is because
the first colour swatch is applied to the points having values greater than zero (the threshold). On the other
hand, the second swatch is applied to the points having values less than zero.
As we want to include points below the surface in our spatial domain, we conclude that we should set Topo
0 in the Define Domain dialog.
Give the domain a name of topo 150m and press OK.
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When a domain is created, its boundary is automatically isosurfaced. This isosurface is called the domain
boundary.
The domain boundary can be viewed by dragging the domain topo 150m Boundary into the scene window:
The resulting mesh has holes in it. This is intended. This happens because the domain boundary intersects
the isosurface bounding box and the intersecting planes were not filled with triangles. This implies that the
domain extends beyond the bounding box, i.e. the domain is larger than the bounding box.
If we have added the triangles on the intersecting planes, the domain isosurface would be, strictly speaking,
the domain boundary "clipped by a bounding box", not the domain boundary itself. For this reason, when the
domain is clipped by the bounding box, Leapfrog leaves it as an open mesh.
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This does not affect point selection in Leapfrog in any way as it is the domain, not the
visual representation of its boundary, that is used for point selection.
To see the closed domain boundary, we will change the domain to include the bounding box. Double-click on
the topo 150m domain and select <From Project Extents> from the Bounding Box list and click OK.
This gives the following result.
The resulting domain is defined by the topography as well as the mesh. Use the slicer to cut through the
domain and to view the data within it, as shown below:
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At times, if you wish to import a mesh into a GMP, the mesh has to be closed. When you
need to generate a closed mesh, you may choose to:
1. change the domain to include the bounding box (as above)
2. enlarge the bounding box to include the whole domain
3. set the isosurfacing parameters to include triangles on the bounding box (beware that
the resulting mesh in this case may not actually reflect the domain boundary).
Domain Boundaries
When a domain is created it is automatically isosurfaced to allow you to see it in the scene. This surface is
called the Domain Boundary and appears below the domain in the project tree, as shown below.
The domain boundary is only used for visualizing the domain in the viewer. It is not
used for point selection or isosurface clipping by Leapfrog.
Like any other isosurface, the parameters for the domain boundary can be edited by double-clicking on the
name. Double-click on the topo 150m Boundary and bring up the Domain Boundary dialog as shown
below:
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You may adjust the resolution and select a different bounding box. If the domain was already created with a
bounding box, the Bounding Box controls will be disabled.
If you select to use the Multi Res, it will override the Resolution setting, and will zoom into finer resolution
when needed during the isosurfacing. Note, however, that this will be considerably slower than ordinary
isosurfacing.
Finally, ticking the Triangles box will fill the clipped surface with triangles, which will ensure that the domain
boundary will be closed.
Using Domains to Restrict Isosurfaces

Now we can use the domain to restrict the extents of the Au grade shells. Double-click on the Au 0.4 grade
shell and in the first row (All Surfaces) click in the Domain column and select the topo 150m from the list as
shown below and click OK.
Run the data using the new domain boundary. The Au 0.4 grade shell now looks like this.
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Select Au (Linear Isotropic) colour mode and observe the colour changes on the clipped surface.
Using Domains to Select Points

We will create a domain based on a fault surface and then select the points inside this domain.
The fault surface we use in this tutorial is the trend Surface. This should be available under the Polylines in
the Project tree if you have studied the Interpolation with Structural Trend Tutorial. Otherwise, navigate to the
Polylines in the Project and import tutorials\Marvin\trend.csv and get the isosurface as per the
instruction given in the aforementioned tutorial.
Display the trend Surface and m_assays. From the scene below, we wish to select points to the left of the
fault surface (i.e. the blue side facing west).
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To define the domain right-click on the Domains folder and click Define Domain. Click the Add button in the
Define Domain dialog and select the trend interpolant as shown below and click OK.
The Define Domain dialog appears.
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The required setting is trend 0. This is the blue side which faces west. Name the domain West of fault
and click OK.
Right-click on the newly created domain and select Selection from the menu as shown below.
Select m_assays from the Choose Locations dialog and click OK.
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The Marvin points and the Cu and Au values are now selected in the domain and appear in the project tree as
shown below.
Next is a view of the selected points. As expected, they all lie to the west of the fault.
The selected points and values can be used (and exported) in the same way as any other points and values
object except that all isosurfaces are clipped to the parent domain by default. To observe this, interpolate Au
in West of fault using the default parameters. Drag the interpolant into the scene to view all the isosurfaces.
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file://C:\TEMP\~hh3761.htm 04-07-2011
Lithology Data Modelling Tutorial Page 1 of 23
Lithology Data Modelling Tutorial
Overview
Lithological data can be agglomerated or filtered and visually checked before generating a solid. Structural
trends may be used to control solid generation for better control of the final solid.
If you are comfortable processing grade data, you will likely find lithology modelling relatively straightforward
as they are both based on the same principle.
To apply the interpolation, we need to derive a reasonable numerical interpretation from these non-numerical
values. Suppose we wish to create a 3D model of lithology X. Leapfrog assumes the following:
1. A boundary point that separates X and non-X has a numerical value 0.
2. The numerical value of a point P is determined by the distance from the closest boundary point.
3. Points inside lithology X have a positive numerical value. Otherwise, values are negative.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Lithology Data Modelling Tutorial >
Extract Volume Points

1. To generate volume points from drillhole data, right-click on the m_assay table and select Extract Points >
Volume Points:
2. This brings up the Extract Volume Points dialog box. Select zone for the Column to use in the drop list.
Suppose we wish to model the MX zone. Initially all zones MX, OX and PM are excluded. Drag MX and
drop into the include box. The Ignore box may be used if you have younger lithologies such as intrusions
or faults that you don't want to take into account for modelling. Such lithologies are likely to have taken
place independent of the overall sedimentary formation and it is better to model them separately at a later
stage.
You can choose either a global or structural trend, but we will use the default isotropic setting.
You can also specify how far away from the surface points are placed (Surface Offset Distance) and the
Background Fill Spacing. For more information, refer to Extract Points: Volume Points in the Reference
Manual.
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3. Type mx-litho in the name and click OK. This creates mx-litho under Boundaries in Project tree.
Display mx-litho distance.
4. You will be able to see the volume points data displaced in 3D space. The red values are inside the volume
and the blue values are outside.
Artificial Colour Limits: Better Distinction
Notice that the default colourmap has Minimum and Maximum limits set to -2.9 and
2.9 respectively.
These are NOT the actual range of the values. In fact, it can be seen from the
Properties dialog that the actual values range from -217 to 145. Any value outside
this range is coloured as if it is -2.9 or 2.9.
Here, -2.9 and 2.9 is the range that Leapfrog has determined by the statistical
analysis on the data set. For a different data set, you will get a different set of the
limit parameters.
These limit parameters are used as default values to give a clear distinction between
the inside and the outside. To illustrate this point, let us enforce the colourmap to use
the actual minimum and maximum values.
Click on the From Input Data button in the Edit Colourmaps dialog. As a result, the
Minimum and Maximum parameters will be updated as shown below.
This results in the scene similar to below. Clearly, the scene with the "artificial" limit
parameters (shown above) gives better distinction between the inside and the
outside.
Interpolating Volume Points

In this section, we perform interpolation on the volume points, and display the surface.
1. Right-click on mx-litho distance in the project tree, and choose Interpolate Values. The Interpolation and
Surface Parameters dialog is brought up. For now, we just stick to the default setting. Click OK to get the
isosurfaces.
2. When the interpolation is complete, the result appears as mx-litho distance (Linear - Isotropic). Right-
click on its isosurface, mx-litho distance 0.0 and choose View. You should be able to see a 3D model
displayed in the scene window similar to below:
The colour of the outer side of the isosurface above is light blue, whereas the inner
surface is red. Usually, the default colour of an isosurface in flat colour mode is red
for the outer surface, light blue for the inner surface, which is not consistent with the
result here.
However, the isosurface above is NOT inverted (ie. inside-out)
In fact, the isosurface of a boundary dataset such as the one above is a boundary
that separates positive and negative values. There are positive values (red) inside of
the isosurface, while negative values (blue) exist outside. In this instance, the blue
for the outer surface and the red for the inner surface should make sense.|
Using a Structural Trend

The mx-litho distance mesh shown above was created using the basic linear isotropic model. If you have a
structural trend available, it can be used to obtain more geologically realistic results.
The prerequisite for this part of the tutorial is the Interpolation with Structural Trend
Tutorial.
Make sure you have imported the polyline trend into the project. Right-click on mx-litho distance and select
Interpolate Values...
Go to the Variogram tab and enable Structural Trend and select trend in the drop list. Also set Range
parameter to 100. Click OK to proceed.
The mesh following the structural trend looks like the following. (There are openings at the top of the
isosurfaces due to the clip by the bounding box. If you would like it fully closed, refer to the techinique
described in Bounding Boxes in the Reference Manual. Alternatively, you can turn on Triangles on B.Box
option in the Surfaces tab.)
Compositing Regions
Creating a Composite Region

The previously shown Extract Volume Points dialog includes some basic functions for compositing a region.
Compositing a region not only involves specifying which lithology type to use (eg. zone, rocktype etc) and
which region to include, exclude, etc. You can also apply various processing filters to refine the selected
regions. A more advanced interface for compositing a region is accessible via m_assays > Composite
Region.
In the Composite Region dialog, the left half is where you can determine what to include and exclude or
ignore. First, select zone as the Column to use.
We include MX and exclude the other two. The right-half of the dialog provides various processing types.
Select Window filter from the Processing Actions drop list and set the parameters: Width=40, Interest
percentage=90 and Conservatism=90. The detailed information on these parameters and other processing
types are given in Composite Region in the Reference Manual.
You can have multiple processing actions: use and buttons to add and delete an action, and and
buttons to alter the processing order.
The following scene is the resulting composite region:
The composite region uses a discrete colourmap which uses three colours, where each colour represents
ignored, excluded or included intervals. A very short green interval, shown in the screenshot above, is an
ignored interval produced from a missing interval.
Turn off the colour for "ignored" and "excluded", and change the colour for "included" to white.
Now, leave the colour for MX zone only, and turn off the other two zones. (Note that the default colour codes
may be different from the following settings.)
Change the opacity of MX_composite so that you can see the original MX intervals through MX_composite.
Notice that short intervals of MX zones are not included in MX_composite. This is because the window filter
with the above setting decided these short intervals are not significant enough.
Extracting Volume Points from the Composited Region

We can generate points from the composited region. Right-click on MX_composite and select Extract Points
> Volume Points.
This brings up the Extract Volume Points dialog. Notice that this dialog is a simpler version of the dialog
used for Generating Volume Points and does not let you decide which region to include or to exclude, as we
have already done that while compositing this region. Leave all the default parameters unchanged, and type
mx-composite-litho in the name field, and click OK to proceed.
A boundary, mx-composite-litho is created. This is the numerically interpreted lithology point data suitable
for interpolation. To visualise the effect of the window filter, interpolate mx-composite-litho distance. Let us
stick to the default isotropic (global trend) interpolation, but enable Triangle on B.Box option.
As the window filter removed a few short intervals from the scene, the isosurface looks slightly different from
the one we obtained in the previous section, Interpolating Volume Points.
Modelling Multiple Lithology Groups with Boolean Mesh

Previously, a single region was chosen and its surface was modelled. Naturally users will want to model all the
lithological regions.
To illustrate this issue, let us start with extracting remaining volume points for PM and OX. Extract each type
individually, following similar steps described in the previous section. Call them pm_litho and ox_litho
respectively.
Interpolate both pm_litho distance and ox_litho distance. Just use the default parameter settings, but it is
recommended to tick the Triangle on B.Box option.
When all three regions are displayed, you should have a scene similar to this:
Here, the top green region corresponds to the OX region, the bottom blue region represents the PM region.
Notice that PM and OX overlap at the top left corner, and there is a cavity not claimed by any of 3 regions.
This problem arises from the fact that the interpolation was performed for each region without considering its
spatial relation to other regions.
In this section, we will learn a quick way of refining the lithology model by using priority ranking and boolean
mesh operations.
The boolean Mesh operation computes the intersection, union or subtraction of one mesh(or isosurface) from
another. Conceptually, the boolean mesh operation is similar to domaining, since the latter essentially
computes the intersection of the mesh and the domain.
When modelling a stack of multiple overlapping meshes, the domaining technique is, however, over-
complicated to apply (if not impossible to use).
See Boolean Mesh in the Reference Manual for details and the comparison between these two techniques.
Resolving Overlaps
Let us suppose that a younger region resides on the top of an older region, such that the following
chronological order is satisfied.
PM>MX>OX
This order means that:
1. The PM region is created first.
2. When the MX region is created, this cuts the boundary of the existing regions (i.e. the PM region)
3. When the OX region is created, this cuts the boundary of the existing regions (i.e. the MX and PM regions)
In the context of the Boolean Mesh, this is interpreted as:
1. The OX region is independent: Isosurface OX itself.
2. The MX region is eroded by OX : The remainder of MX after subtracting OX, i.e. NEW MX = MX-OX
3. The PM region is eroded by MX and OX: The remainder of PM after subtracting MX and OX, i.e. NEW PM =
PM-(MX OX)
Computing NEW MX
Let us compute NEW MX first. Right click on the mx-litho distance and select New Boolean Mesh.
When the Boolean Mesh dialog appears, select ox_litho distance as the second mesh and First minus
Second as the Operation. Type in new mx as the name of this and click OK.
Press the Run All ( ) button and process the new mx mesh. Notice that the top portion of this mesh has
been cut by the OX region. Now the OX region can sit on it nicely.
Computing NEW PM
Computing NEW PM = PM-(MX OX) takes two boolean mesh operations. First, we compute MX OX.
Right-click on the mx-litho distance and start the boolean mesh dialog. Select the ox_litho distance as the
second mesh, and, this time, choose Union operation. Type in mx union ox as the name and click the OK
button.
The result mesh mx union ox looks like below.
Now we compute the minus operation in PM-(MX OX). Right-click on the pm_litho distance and start the
boolean mesh operation. Select mx union ox as the second mesh, and choose the First minus second for
the Operation.
The result mesh new pm should look like below.
Set the colour of each mesh so that:

• new pm : blue
• new mx : red
• ox : green
and turn on the view of three meshes. They stack up nicely as shown below.
The boolean mesh engine may occasionally return incorrect results or even fail to
compute. In many cases, you can achieve a similar result by applying domainig
techniques. Since the data may be inherently unsuited to this kind of operation,
success is not guaranteed. If this is the case, contact customer support to request a
fix. Please export the meshes to *.msh files and supply them when reporting a
problem.
Modelling Multiple Lithology Groups with Domaining

As an alternative to the boolean mesh operation, you may consider applying domaining techniques.
Resolving Overlaps
Let us revisit the the following chronological order presented in the previous topic.
PM>MX>OX
This order means that:
1. The PM region is created first.
2. When the MX region is created, this cuts the boundary of the existing regions (i.e. the PM region)
3. When the OX region is created, this cuts the boundary of the existing regions (i.e. the MX and PM regions)
In other words:
1. The OX region is independent: Isosurface OX itself.
2. The MX region is dependent on the OX : NEW MX = MX inside the domain "exclude OX"
3. The PM region is dependent on the MX and OX: NEW PM = PM inside the domain "exclude (MX OX)"
In this topic, let us compute NEW MX using the domaining technique.
The first step is to create a domain "exclude OX".
Right-click on Domains and select Define Domain.. Add ox_litho distance.
Since a point inside the OX region is positive, the domain that excludes the OX region is defined by ox_litho
0. Type "exclude OX" in the name field and click OK to proceed.
The domain "exclude OX" is basically the bounding box minus the OX region. Note that we wish the NEW MX
region to be kept inside this domain.
Double-click on the interpolant mx-litho distance 0.0 and go to the Surfaces tab. Select "exclude OX" for
the Domain and change the name to "new mx".
Turn off the view of exclude OX, and turn on the view of mx-litho distance 0.0. You will find that the NEW
MX region nicely sitting below the OX region with minimal overlapping (depending on the resolution or Exact
Intersection setting).
Let us now create a domain for the last region, PM. This region should be inside the new domain of "exclude
(MX OX)", which is obtained by subtracting the union of MX and OX from the bounding box.
Note that
exclude (MX OX) = exclude MX exclude OX
Thus, the domain "exclude (MX OX)" can be obtained by first creating exclude MX. The inside of the
isosurface mx-litho is positive, hence mx-litho distance 0. Name this domain exclude MX.
Second, create another domain exclude (MX OX).

Select Intersection of the inside of exclude OX and the inside of exclude MX.
Click OK to create the domain.

Note that the domain "exclude (MX OX)" is indeed disjoint from other regions.
Why compute exclude MX instead of exclude NEW MX?
As NEW MX has been computed, and the domain we want to construct should
exclude both OX and this NEW MX, it would look more natural to create exclude NEW
MX rather than exclude MX.
Note that exclude (MX OX)=exclude (NEW MX OX)
Because NEW MX OX = MX OX.
Working out NEW MX OX is more computation intensive operation as two meshes,

NEW MX and OX share a surface, meaning lots of co-planar triangles on the shared
surface. This makes the computation inherently difficult. While Leapfrog 2.1 has improved
support for the co-planar triangle computation, it is recommended to avoid if possible.
Now, we use this domain to restrict the PM region. Double-click on the pm_litho distance and change its
domain to "exclude (MX OX)"
Run all and display the original ox litho all 3 regions. They now appear mutually disjoint from each other.
Fill the Cavities

The cavities under the OX region still remain unfilled. This is simply due to the fact that there is no way to
determine which region they belong to. Basically, there is no sample in the original drillhole data close to the
cavities. It is now up to your own interpretation of what the unspecified region should be made of.
For example, if you think the cavity should be filled with the MX region, create a domain:
exclude OX exclude PM
Let's name this domain "exclude (OX PM)".
View this domain instead of the surface of mx-litho distance 0.0. Turn on viewing the domain exclude (OX
PM) Boundary and ox_litho distance 0.0 and pm_litho distance 0.0
You should see a result similar to:
Export Tutorial Page 1 of 12
Export Tutorial
Overview
The following object types can be exported from Leapfrog:
• Meshes ( ) and isosurfaces ( )
• Points ( ) and values ( )
• Polylines ( )
• RBF interpolants ( )
You can also export scenes for viewing in the free Leapfrog viewer and movies.
Meshes and Isosurfaces

Leapfrog can export these types of files:
• Leapfrog Attribute Binary Mesh Format (*.msh)
• GOCAD ascii Format (*.ts)
• Drawing Exchange Format (*.dxf)
• Surpac ASCII Format (*pt.asc, *tr.asc)
• Gemcom TRI ASCII Format (*.tri)
• Datamine ASCII Format (*pt.asc, *tr.asc)
• Micromine ASCII Format (*_MMpt.dat, *MMtr.dat)
• VULCAN Format (*.00t)
• DXF Polyface Mesh (MineCAD)
• Alias Wavefront Object
The Leapfrog format supports exporting attribute data that have been evaluated at the vertices of the
mesh. FracSIS v.4.2 is currently the only commercially available product that is able to import
Leapfrog native meshes. The meshes can be exported with multiple attributes.
No other triangulation file formats support attribute export.
We have ensured that meshes generated within Leapfrog are consistent and
manifold. However, some valid meshes may become invalid during import into
GMP products due to rounding errors. For this reason, validation should also be
carried out within GMP products.
Points and Values

Points and values objects can be exported in Comma Separated Values (*.csv) format or in
Leapfrog™ (*.pl3) format. When point objects are exported all points and all associated value
file://C:\TEMP\~hh395B.htm 04-07-2011
objects are exported, including points without any numeric attributes. When value objects are
exported only the selected grade values are exported. Points without a grade value are not exported.
Polylines
Polylines can only be exported in Leapfrog ascii polyline format (*.csv) for sharing with other
Leapfrog users.
RBF Interpolants
RBF interpolants can only be exported in Leapfrog binary RBF format (*.rbf).
Drillhole Errors
Errors in drillhole data can be exported in ascii *.csv format.
The prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The

tutorial project must be opened in Leapfrog prior to commencing this tutorial.
Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials > Export Tutorial >
Exporting Meshes
Leapfrog validates the triangulations at the end of each isosurfacing process. This ensures that the
meshes do not contain any cross-overs or holes that compromise point selection and volume
calculations in GMP products. Leapfrog will also check any imported meshes for consistent face
orientation and will fix any inconsistencies found. However, holes or other manifoldness problems are
not fixed.
Some valid meshes may become invalid during import into GMP products
due to rounding errors. For this reason, validation should also be carried out
within GMP products.
Points, assay values, polylines and RBF interpolants can also be exported
but are not discussed here.
Follow the steps below to export the Cu 1.0 grade shell.

• Right-click on the Cu 1.0 grade shell in the project tree and select Export:
• The File Selection dialog box will appear. The default Mesh File Name is made from the grade
shell name and the interpolant name as <grade shell> of '<interpolant>'. The File Type will
default to the format last used. Also shown is a list of connected mesh parts.
• To change directories, click the Browse button, navigate to the required directory and then click the
Save button. The File name and Save as type may also be changed at this time. Select the
appropriate file type when you want to view existing files.
• For this example we will save the Cu 1.0 grade shell in the Datamine format. Select Datamine
ASCII Format (Pts & Tris) from the File Type drop-down list. The Datamine format and Surpac
formats require two files to be exported.
• A second file text-box appears automatically when either is selected:
• We may only want to export the largest part as mining the smaller outliers is not economical. Click
the Remove All button to deselect all parts and select only the first one with largest volume.
• Rename the Points File Name to cu 1.0 (Linear Isotropic)_pt.asc. Note that the second filename
changes automatically to match. Now click OK to export the object.
See also Batch Export in the Reference Manual.
Exporting Drillhole Errors

Drillhole data often contains errors. Unlike some other applications, rows containing errors are
imported and can be corrected in Leapfrog. However, fixing errors is often done on the primary data
source, outside Leapfrog. Therefore, Leapfrog is able to export a list of the errors.
It is important to realize that the Export Errors command will only export errors currently present in
the database. Once you have fixed any errors in Leapfrog you cannot export them as they no longer
exist. For this reason, it is recommended that you specify an error log file when importing data.
Exporting Errors from a Table

1. Right-click on the table containing errors in the project tree.
2. When a dialog pops up, specify the file name and the required location. The error log will be stored
in CSV format. A CSV format file is fully compatible with any spreadsheet software (such as MS
Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc). As shown, some basic information on the the error is stored in the
log file.
Exporting All Errors from the Database

1. Right-click on the Drillhole Data object in the project tree:
2. Select the required Folder and enter a Base file name in the Export Drillhole Data Errors dialog
as shown below. Click Export.
Creating and Exporting Scenes

To save the current scene, right-click on the Saved Scenes and Movies object and select Save
Scene. The Remember Scene window will be displayed:
Enter a name and description for the scene and click OK. The scene will be saved and added to the
Saved Scenes and Movies object.
To restore a scene, drag it into the scene window or right-click on it and select Display.
You can export scenes, which can then be viewed in the Leapfrog Viewer application. The Leapfrog
Viewer is free to download and does not require a hardware key. The Leapfrog Viewer may be freely
downloaded from http://www.leapfrog3d.com/software/.
If you wish to export more than one scene, it is recommended that you first save
the scenes you wish to export.
To export a scene:
1. Set up the scene with the first view you wish to export.
2. Select the Export command from the Scene menu.
3. The Export Scenes window appears. Enter a description of the scene in the box to the right of the
image:
4. If you have a saved scene to export along with the one before, leave the Export Scenes window
open and display the saved scene.
5. Click on the Add Scene button:
6. Enter a new name for the scene:
7. Click the Save button to export the selected scenes. You will be prompted to enter a filename and
location.
Creating and Exporting Movies

In Leapfrog, a movie can be created from a series of saved scenes.
To create a new movie, right-click on the Saved Scenes and Movies object and select Create
Movie. The New Movie window will be displayed:
Select the saved scenes you wish to add to the movie by clicking on them in the list, then clicking Add
To Storyboard. You can also add a scene to the storyboard by double-clicking on it in the scene in
the list. When you add a second scene, a transition is automatically added between the two scenes.
You can add the scene currently displayed in the scene window to the movie by clicking the Add
Current Scene button.
Once you have added scenes to the storyboard, you can click on a scene to change how it will appear
in the movie:
You can also change the transitions by clicking on them.

Enter a name and description for the movie and click OK. The movie will be saved and added to the
Saved Scenes and Movies object.
To export the movie:
1. Right-click on the movie object in the project tree and select Export. The Export Movie window will
appear:
2. If you tick the Export frame images box, images of each frame will be saved in a separate folder.
3. Select a location to save the file and enter a filename. Click OK to export the movie.
Leapfrog will then save the movie in the specified location, which may take some time.

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Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials >

Working with Projects

Creating a New Tutorial Project

Open a project by:

• Clicking the button on the project toolbar

If a project is already loaded, it is automatically closed when you open another

Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials >

Drillhole Data Import Tutorial

Drillhole Data Format

Table Types and Column Data Types

Importing Drillhole Data

When a filter is created, it appears in the tree.

Case Studies: Fixing Errors

This brings up the Database Errors window:

Error Fixing Techniques

Click the Close button to see if this error is fixed.

fixing other errors.

Fix Collar Maxdepths

Add Special Assay Value

This brings up the Master Samples window.

Display Drillhole Data

Right-click on m_assays in the project tree and select View.

New Query Filter

This creates a filter in the tree:

New Interval Selection

Right-click on m_assays and select New Interval Selection.

the wanted AvT intervals.

Adding Intervals to a Separate Subset

Advanced Interval Selection

Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials >

Point Data Import/Extraction Tutorial

Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Drillhole Data Import tutorial. The

Option 1: Extract from Drillhole Data

If you have used Option 1, this topic may be skipped.

Find a file called Marvin_Cu_Au.csv under the tutorials\Marvin folder,

The first five lines of the file Marvin_Cu_Au.csv are:

Most commonly used procedures can be accessed by right mouse clicking

The Significance of Font Types in Leapfrog

In addition to manual saving, Leapfrog has an Auto save facility running in

Navigation: User's Guide and Tutorials >

Data Viewing Tutorial

Accessing Object Properties

Basic Display Techniques

Tick the View option if you wish to display the object.

3D Navigation and Display Settings of the Model

3D Navigation with the Mouse

Look West: W key on keyboard

Shape Properties Settings

Altering Colourmap Settings

This brings up the Edit Colourmaps dialog box:

Selecting in the Scene

Create a New Partition

3. Click on the New Group button.

3. Type in short as a new Group name.

Manage Colour Palettes Dialog

Create a Palette from a partition

Applying a Colour Palette

Export and Import a Colour Palette

Section View Manipulation

Prerequisite to this tutorial is the Isotropic Interpolation Tutorial. The Tutorial

The slicer entry in the shape list has various icons.

Using the Shape List