Underground Mine Workings

Underground Mine Workings- Converting Historic Mine Drawings into AutoCAD for Reopening of Historic Mine

Agapito Associates, Inc. (AAI) provides consulting services in geo-engineering, mining engineering, and related disciplines. Founded in 1978 to meet the needs of the mineral and energy industries, the firm operates out of offices in Grand Junction and Golden, Colorado.
In the early 1980s, the New Elk Mine was closed and allowed to partially flood. In 2009, AAI. was hired to provide mining engineering services to bring this large underground, multi-seam coal mining operation back into production.  AAI faced one major obstacle- although there were drawings showing the location of the underground mine shafts and workings, these drawings only existed in paper format.  AAI hired DDS, Inc. to convert the original documents into a fully functional vector (CAD) format.	Mine Drawings Converted to AutoCAD Aerial Imagery Base with the AutoCAD Drawing
The data sources provided by AAI included six 36"x54" blueline copies of the original mine working drawings and GPS surveyed control points.  High resolution aerial imagery was used as additional control.
Source documents were scanned and georeferenced into a State Plane Coordinate System using various GPS surveyed control points along with aerial imagery.  Once a composite raster image was created in its proper geographic location, DDS digitized the underground workings drawing into a 100% editable AutoCAD file. AutoCAD layers included surface, surface labels, geology drillholes, geology drillhole labels, geology structure contours allenseam, geology faults and misc structure features, old workings labels, old workings, and ventilation seals.	Large Format Scanning of Original Paper Documents Registering Drawings with Limited Control into a Real World Coordinate System Digitizing Historic Information into AutoCAD
The delivered AutoCAD files of the underground workings aided AAI in the completion of the initial detailed mine planning required for MSHA plans, permitting, feasibility work, and startup of mining.	Helping you make better decisions through information... Digital Data Services, Inc.