Mine Planning Software Compared: Deswik, Micromine, Surpac

Mine planning software takes a block model and turns it into something a mine can actually dig: an optimised pit shell or stope layout, a detailed design, and a schedule that says what gets mined, when, and where it goes. Every major suite covers that chain, but they split it into different products, and the differences matter more than the marketing suggests.

Try it: Taylor’s rule mine life and capacity check →

Below we compare five suites that dominate searches for mine planning and design software: Deswik (now part of Sandvik), Datamine (which now includes MineMax), Micromine (now part of Weir), GEOVIA Surpac and Maptek Vulcan. We map each against the planning stages it covers, look at underground planning and scheduling, explain Deswik’s modules and Deswik training, and add a quick, well-known rule of thumb for sanity-checking mine life. Everything comes from the vendors’ own pages or published sources; we have no commercial tie to any of them.

“Taylor’s rule, as used by the US Bureau of Mines, puts mine life at 0.2 times the fourth root of ore tonnage.”

What mine planning software does, stage by stage

Mine planning software picks up where the geological model ends. Our comparison of 3D geological modelling software covers the tools that build that model. The block model carries rock types, densities and estimated grades. Planning software adds economics (prices, costs, recoveries), geotechnical limits (slope angles, stope spans) and operational limits (equipment, rates, access), then works out what is worth mining and in what order.

1. Strategic planning and optimisation. Find the economic limits: the ultimate pit or the best set of stopes, plus cut-off grades and phasing that maximise value.
2. Design. Turn optimised shells into practical pits with ramps and benches, or underground layouts with declines, levels and stopes.
3. Long-term scheduling. Sequence the design over the life of mine, usually by quarter or year, to meet mill feed and grade targets.
4. Short-term scheduling. Plan the next weeks and months in detail: which blasts, which faces, which trucks.
5. Execution and reconciliation. Track what was actually mined against the plan and feed the differences back.

Where pit optimisation came from

Much of open-pit strategy rests on one idea from 1965. Helmut Lerchs and Ingo Grossmann’s paper “Optimum design of open-pit mines”, published in Transactions CIM, set out a graph algorithm for finding the pit contour that maximises total value subject to wall-slope limits. Modern optimisers use faster solvers and handle more constraints, but the question they answer is the same one.

If you are still at the stage of deciding whether a deposit is worth a study, planning software comes after the feasibility questions. Our feasibility study guide explains how scoping, pre-feasibility and feasibility work fits together.

Deswik mining software: modules, LHS and training

Deswik is an Australian developer that Sandvik bought in 2022. Sandvik’s completion announcement placed it in a new Digital Mining Technologies division. Deswik mining software is now sold as a set of core products plus specialist tools, according to the product list on Deswik’s website.

Core Deswik products

• Spatial: Deswik’s end-to-end design environment.
• Planning: scheduling that links mine designs and schedules dynamically.
• MDM: workflow management for a site’s mine planning data.
• OPS: short-term planning and shift execution, for tracking compliance to plan.
• NOVA: an open-pit planning tool that brings scheduling, blending and haulage together.

Specialist tools, including Deswik LHS

Around the core sit specialist tools: Stope Optimizer for underground stopes, Pit Design for turning shells into final designs, Caving, underground and open-pit drill and blast design (UGDB and OPDB), Blend, GO for optimising pit designs and schedules together, APEX for underground strategic planning, and BOLT for value-chain margin. Deswik LHS is described as a way to understand material movement and create optimal haulage strategies, which is why it comes up whenever haul distances drive cost.

Older articles, including earlier versions of this page, refer to dotted module names such as Deswik.CAD and Deswik.Sched. The current website uses the product names above, so use those when you ask Deswik for a quote or a course.

Deswik training

Deswik’s training overview lists two formats: self-paced online courses for a basic understanding, and instructor-led courses delivered onsite, in a classroom or virtually. Courses are grouped as Essentials, covering the user environment and basic platform use, and role-specific training for particular sectors or jobs. The page lists in-person training in Brisbane and Perth and online courses for North America. It does not publish prices, so ask for them with your licence quote.

Mine planning software suites compared

Each suite on this list covers most of the planning chain, but the products are split and named differently. The matrix below shows what each vendor’s own pages list for five planning stages. It is a map of what is advertised, not a quality ranking.

Datamine, including MineMax

Anyone searching for MineMax Planner will find that minemax.com now forwards to Datamine’s planning page. Datamine groups its planning tools by job: Strategy (Studio NPVS+, Minemax Scheduler, MSO), Design (Studio OP, Studio UG, MineScape Open Pit), Schedule (MineScape LRS and TS, Minemax Tempo, DTS), plus blasting, survey and production tools such as Ordo. The MineMax scheduling products therefore live on inside Datamine’s range.

Micromine

Micromine’s product list covers Beyond for mine design, planning and surveying, Alastri for open-pit metals planning, Spry for open-pit and underground soft-rock planning, Advance for underground metals, and Pitram for fleet management and mine control. Micromine says it has 22 offices serving more than 120 countries, so readers looking for Micromine in Vancouver, Australia, the USA or South Africa should check its contact pages for the nearest office. Weir completed its purchase of Micromine on 30 April 2025.

GEOVIA Surpac

GEOVIA Surpac from Dassault Systèmes combines geological modelling with mine design and mine plans for open pit or underground work. Its role-based tools include a Mine Designer, a Drill and Blast Designer and a Stope Optimizer.

Maptek Vulcan

Maptek Vulcan lists open-pit and underground design, integrated drill and blast, and a Scheduling Suite with a Gantt Scheduler and Short Term Planner, alongside pit, cut-off grade and stope optimisation.

Mine scheduling software and a quick sanity check on mine life

Mine scheduling software sequences the design against targets: mill feed, grade, stripping, equipment hours. Long-term schedules usually run by quarter or year across the whole mine life; short-term schedules run by week or shift. The best schedule is the one the mine can actually follow, which is why links from long-term plans to shift execution have become a selling point.

Before any detailed scheduling, planners often sanity-check the scale of an operation with a rule of thumb. The best known is Taylor’s rule. A US Geological Survey economic filter for open-pit gold-silver mining (Open-File Report 98-207, by Singer, Menzie and Long) quotes the US Bureau of Mines form: daily capacity C = T^0.75/70 short tons per day, where T is ore tonnage in short tons and 350 operating days a year are assumed, and mine life L = 0.2 × T^0.25 years.

The same report found that observed capacities at 41 economic deposits were larger than Taylor’s rule predicts, and fitted a revised relationship, C = T^0.5874/2.404. Both are shown in the calculator. Neither replaces a schedule; they tell you whether a proposed production rate is in a normal range for the deposit size.

The chart compares the two capacity rules across four orders of magnitude of deposit size. At small tonnages the revised fit predicts roughly three times Taylor’s capacity; by a billion short tons the two lines meet.

What a scheduler actually balances

A capacity figure is only the start. Once the rate is set, mine scheduling software has to juggle several targets at once, and most scheduling arguments on site are about which one gives way first.

• Mill feed: enough ore every period to keep the plant full at the designed rate.
• Grade: feed grade close to the plant’s design and the financial plan, often by blending from several faces or stockpiles.
• Stripping: waste removed early enough to expose ore, without front-loading so much that cash flow suffers.
• Equipment: truck and loader hours within fleet capacity, and haul distances that do not balloon later in the mine life.
• Sequence rules: pit phases, bench advance limits, and underground dependencies such as fill and ventilation.

When targets conflict, the planner decides. Scheduling tools can search for better sequences, but they still need someone to rank the priorities and check the result makes sense on the ground.

Underground mine planning software

Underground mine planning software solves a different geometry problem. Instead of a pit shell, planners optimise stope shapes around the orebody, then design the access (declines, levels, ore passes, ventilation) and schedule development and production so that each stope has access, fill and ventilation when it is needed.

• Stope optimisation: Deswik Stope Optimizer, Surpac’s Stope Optimizer and Vulcan’s stope optimisation all appear on the vendors’ pages; Datamine lists MSO among its strategy tools.
• Strategic underground planning: Deswik describes APEX as a tool for strategic decisions that maximise the NPV of an underground mine.
• Development and drill design: Deswik lists UGDB for underground drill and blast; Datamine lists Studio UG; Micromine lists Advance for underground metals and Spry for soft rock.
• Caving: Deswik lists a Caving tool for modelling cave and rock flow over the life of mine.

Underground schedules are more constrained than open-pit ones: a stope cannot be mined until its access is developed and the neighbouring stopes are filled or stable. That is why dependency-based Gantt scheduling is common underground, and why planners check that the design and schedule tools link cleanly.

Gold mining software needs

People searching for gold mining software usually mean one of two things: planning for a gold mine, or software to find gold. For planning, gold’s high value per tonne and often narrow, erratic orebodies mean small selective mining units, careful dilution modelling and tight grade control. Every suite above handles gold; the question is how well its stope optimiser and grade-control tools match your orebody. For finding gold, see the next section.

Before planning: finding and defining the deposit

All mine planning software needs a block model, and a block model needs drilling. Before that is a long exploration phase, from desktop study and satellite screening to mapping, sampling and first drill holes. Our mineral exploration guide covers that sequence, and our project finance modelling guide covers how the eventual mine plan feeds valuation.

The mine life chart below applies Taylor’s rule across the same range of deposit sizes. A deposit ten times larger lasts only about 1.8 times longer under this rule, because larger deposits usually justify larger plants.

Where our satellite detection fits

We work well upstream of mine planning. Our satellite-based mineral detection screens a licence from orbit, analysing multispectral and hyperspectral imagery to flag likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos, faults and fractures before field teams deploy. You send coordinates, a KML/KMZ file or a polygon with country and target mineral, and we deliver in 5–20 business days.

• 📊 Premium report: high-potential zones, prospectivity heatmaps, estimated location and depth ranges, indicative quantity and geological interpretation, as a PDF plus georeferenced GIS files.
• 📊 Premium+ report: adds TargetMax™ Drilling Intelligence, with drilling-angle recommendations and interactive 3D subsurface models of vein structures and mineral distribution.
• Scale and cost: 100,000+ hectares scanned for 20+ mineral types in 25+ countries; timelines from months to days and up to 80–85% lower early-exploration cost.
• ⚠ Not a mine plan: our targets are exploration targets, not resources or reserves. They decide where to map, sample and drill, long before any block model exists.

See a sample of satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping, or draw your boundary on mining.farmonaut.com: Map Your Mining Site.

Rolling out new mine planning software on a site

Switching packages at an operating mine is a project in its own right. The design files, schedules, reserve reports and haul networks all live in the old system, and the mine cannot stop planning while the move happens. A few practical steps reduce the risk.

• Run both systems for one planning cycle. Produce the same quarterly plan in the old and new mine planning software and reconcile the differences before switching.
• Migrate the reference data first. Topography, as-built surfaces, block models and design strings are the foundation; schedules can be rebuilt once those match.
• Agree naming and coding rules. Material types, pit phases and stope IDs should be identical across geology, planning and survey, or reconciliation breaks.
• Train by role. Strategic planners, short-term planners and surveyors use different parts of a suite; role-specific courses, which vendors such as Deswik offer, avoid everyone sitting through everything.
• Keep a data owner. A mine planning data workflow tool, or at least a named person, stops five versions of the same pit design circulating by email.

Most of these steps apply whichever mine planning software you choose, and they cost more staff time than the licence. Budget for them in the business case.

How to choose mine planning and design software

The right choice depends less on features than on fit with your people, your data and your existing tools. These questions separate the options quickly:

1. What do your planners already know? Retraining a planning team is a real cost. Deswik training, for example, is split into Essentials and role-specific courses; every vendor has an equivalent path.
2. Which stages must be linked? If design changes must flow straight into the schedule, test that link in a trial on your own data.
3. Open pit, underground or both? Check the stope, caving and development tools if you are going underground.
4. Where does the geology come from? If the geological model lives in another package (Leapfrog, for example; see our Leapfrog Geo guide), confirm the import path, for example through the Open Mining Format.
5. Who supports you locally? Offices and trainers in your time zone matter more than headline features.

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed September 2026 against Deswik’s product, LHS and training pages, Sandvik’s Deswik completion release, Datamine’s planning page, Micromine’s product list and Weir’s completion release, the GEOVIA Surpac and Maptek Vulcan product pages, USGS Open-File Report 98-207 (Singer, Menzie and Long) for Taylor’s rule, the Lerchs and Grossmann (1965) record and the Global Mining Guidelines Group’s Open Mining Format page.

Product names, modules and training formats change; confirm with each vendor. We have no commercial relationship with the vendors named and have not benchmarked their software. Taylor’s rule and the revised fit are rules of thumb, not a mine plan. Satellite targets are exploration targets, not mineral resources or reserves.