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When you click OK, the points object will be added to the scene, along with a set of tools for
selecting points. To select points, click on the Select Points button ( ) and click the Add Points
button ( ). In the scene, draw a line across each point you wish to select:

Selected points are highlighted in the scene. If you accidentally select the wrong point, either:
l Click the Remove Points button ( ) and draw across the point once again.
l Hold the Ctrl key while drawing across the point.
You can also:
l Select all visible points by clicking on the Select All button ( ) or by pressing Ctrl+A.
l Clear all selected points by clicking on the Clear Selection button ( ) or by pressing
Ctrl+Shift+A.
l Swap the selected points for the unselected points by clicking on the Invert Selection
button ( ) or by pressing Ctrl+I.

To change the width of the line used to select points, click on the Change Line Width
button ( ) and enter a new value. You can keep the Set Line Width window open while you
select points so you can change the line width as required.

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When you have selected at least one point, click on the Assign to button, then select Create
New Lithology:

Dac

Enter a Name for the new category, then click OK.

The new category will be created and the scene updated to reflect the changes:

Once you have created a new category, you can add to it by selecting further points, then
selecting the category from the Assign to list.
When you are finished, click the Save button ( ) and close the Category Selection window.
The new category column will appear in the project tree as an additional column in the points
table. Select the new column from the shape list to display it.

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Geophysical Data
The types of geophysical data that can be imported into Leapfrog Geo are:
l 2D Grids
l ASEG_DFN Files
l UBC Grids
l GOCAD Models

2D Grids
Leapfrog Geo imports the following 2D grid formats:
l Arc/Info ASCII Grid (*.asc, *.txt)
l Arco/Info Binary Grid (*.adf)
l Digital Elevation Model (*.dem)
l Intergraph ERDAS ER Mapper 2D Grid (*.ers)
l ESRI .hdr Labelled Image (*.img, *.bil)
l SRTM .hgt (*.hgt)
l Surfer ASCII or Binary Grid (*.grd)
l Grid eXchange File (*.gxf)
l Geosoft Grid (*.grd)

MapInfo files can be imported into the GIS Data, Maps and Photos folder. 2D grids in these
files will be saved into the into the GIS Data, Maps and Photos folder. See Importing a
MapInfo Batch File for more information.

To import a 2D grid, right-click on either the Geophysical Data folder and select Import 2D
Grid. Navigate to the folder that contains grid and select the file. Click Open to begin importing
the data.
The Import 2D Grid window will appear, displaying the grid and each of the bands available.
Select the data type for each band and set the georeference information, if necessary. See
Importing a Map or Image for information on georeferencing imported files.
Once the grid has been imported, you can set its elevation, which is described in Setting
Elevation for GIS Objects and Images.

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When you display the grid in the scene, select the imported bands from the shape list:

Grids can be displayed as points ( ) or as cells and the values filtered, as described in Displaying
Points.

ASEG_DFN Files
Leapfrog Geo imports ASEG_DFN points in *.dfn format. To import an ASEG_DFN file, right-
click on the Geophysical Data folder and select Import ASEG_DFN. Leapfrog Geo will ask you
to specify the file location. Click Open to import the file. In the window that appears, enter a
name for the file, then click OK. Next set the X, Y and Z coordinates and click OK. If you select no
column for the Z coordinates, all Z values will be set to zero.
The file will appear in the Geophysical Data folder.

UBC Grids
Leapfrog Geo imports UBC grids in *.msh format, together with numeric values in properties
files in *.gra, *.sus, *.mag and *.den formats. UBC grids can be evaluated against geological and
numeric models, which can then be exported with the grid.

Importing a UBC Grid

To import a UBC grid, right-click on the Geophysical Data folder and select Import UBC
Model. In the window that appears, click Browse to locate the file to be imported. Click Add to
add any properties file, although these are not required.
For any properties file, click the Inactive Value field to mark cells as inactive. Doing so does not
change the data but ensures that cells with the inactive value can be hidden when the grid is
displayed in the scene. If you do not set this value when importing the grid, you can set it later by
double-clicking on the grid in the project tree.
Click Import. The grid will appear in the Geophysical Data folder.

Evaluating UBC Grids
UBC grids can be evaluated against geological and numeric models as described in
Evaluations. However, UBC grids cannot be evaluated against fault blocks and mutli-
domained RBF interpolants, although they can be evaluated against the parent geological
model and the parent numeric model.

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Mapping Category Evaluations

When a UBC grid is exported with a category evaluation, category data is mapped to an editable
numeric value. You can edit this by double-clicking on the grid in the project tree, then clicking
on the Export Mappings tab:

Change the numeric value assigned to each lithology, if required. You can also change the
value assigned to blocks that have no lithology.

The Export Mappings tab does not appear for UBC grids that have no geological model
evaluations.

Exporting a UBC Grid
To export a UBC grid, right-click on it in the project tree and select Export. Select the
evaluations to export with the grid, then select a folder. Click OK to export the grid.
A UBC grid can also be exported as points to a CSV file. To do this, right-click on the grid and
select Export as Points. You will then be prompted to select a file name and location. Once you
have clicked Save, select the CSV export options for null values and numeric precision, then
click OK.
The CSV file will contain:
l X, Y and Z columns, which represent the centre of each grid block
l I, J and K columns, which is the grid block index. I is in the range 1 to NI, J is in the range 1 to
NJ and K is in the range 1 to NK, where NI, NJ and NK are the grid dimensions.
l One or more data columns

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GOCAD Models
To import a GOCAD model, right-click on the Geophysical Data folder and select Import
GOCAD Model. Leapfrog Geo will ask you to specify the file location. Click Open to import the
file.
In the window that appears, set the Subsample Rate and enter a Name for the model. Click OK
to import the model, which will appear under the Geophysical Data folder.
You can then evaluate geological models, interpolants and distance functions in the project on
the model. In the case of geological models, you can also combine two or more models to
evaluate on the model. To evaluate a model, right-click on the model object in the project tree
and select Evaluations. See Evaluations for more information.
A GOCAD model can be exported as points to a CSV file. To do this, right-click on the grid and
select Export as Points. You will then be prompted to select a file name and location. Once you
have clicked Save, select the CSV export options for null values and numeric precision, then
click OK.
The CSV file will contain:
l X, Y and Z columns, which represent the centre of each grid block
l I, J and K columns, which is the grid block index. I is in the range 1 to NI, J is in the range 1 to
NJ and K is in the range 1 to NK, where NI, NJ and NK are the grid dimensions.
l One or more data columns

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Structural Data
In Leapfrog Geo, you can create and edit planar structural data tables directly or from other
objects in the project. Structural data can also be used to create and edit many surfaces.
Downhole planar structural data and lineations can also be imported, although structural data
imported in this way cannot be edited.
This topic describes how to work with structural data in Leapfrog Geo. It covers:
l Creating New Planar Structural Data Tables
l Importing Planar Structural Data
l Importing Lineations
l Displaying Structural Data
l Viewing Statistics on Structural Data
l Assigning Structural Data to Categories
l Editing the Orientation of Planar Structural Data
l Declustering Planar Structural Data
l Setting Elevation for Structural Data
l Estimating Planar Structural Data
See Stereonets and Form Interpolants for information on tools for analysing structural data.

Leapfrog Geo calculates strike using the American right-hand rule; when looking in the strike
direction, the plane should dip to the right.

Creating New Planar Structural Data Tables

There are two ways to create a new planar structural data table in Leapfrog Geo:
l Create a new table as part of creating or editing another object. See Editing Surfaces with
Structural Data.
l Create a new table using the Structural Modelling folder. Use this technique when, for
example, you are creating structural data points from a map or image. Right-click on the
Structural Modelling folder and select New Planar Structural Data. In the window that
appears, enter a name for the new table and click OK.
Before creating the new data table, add the map, image or data object you wish to work from to
the scene and orient the scene for drawing the new data points.

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When a new structural data table is created, it will be added to the scene. The Planar Structural
Data window will open, together with a set of tools for adding structural data points:

Click on the New Structural Data Point button ( ) and click and drag along the strike line in
the scene to add a new data point:

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You can adjust the data point using the controls in the Planar Structural Data window:

Importing Planar Structural Data

Leapfrog Geo supports planar structural measurements in .csv or text formats. This topic
describes importing structural data tables that include location information. Downhole
structural data can also be imported, as described in Importing Downhole Structural Data.
Structural data containing location information can be imported from:
l Files stored on your computer or a network location. Right-click on the Structural
Modelling folder and select Import Planar Structural Data. You will be prompted to select
a file.
l From any database that runs an ODBC interface. Right-click on the Structural Modelling
folder and select Import Planar Structural Data via ODBC. See Selecting the ODBC Data
Source below.

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For each of these options, once the data source is selected, the process of importing the data is
the same. Leapfrog Geo will display the data and you can select which columns to import:

Leapfrog Geo expects East (X), North (Y), Elev (Z), Dip and Dip Azimuth columns. The Polarity
column is optional. The Base Category column can be used for filtering data once it has been
imported.
Click Finish to import the data. The structural measurements will appear in the Structural
Modelling folder.
Once the data has been imported, you can reload and append the data and add columns to the
data in a similar manner to drillhole data. See Appending Drillholes, Reloading Drillhole Data
and Importing Columns for more information.

Selecting the ODBC Data Source

When importing planar structural data from an ODBC database, you will need to specify the
ODBC data source. Enter the information supplied by your database administrator and click OK.
Once the data source is selected, the import process is similar to that described above.

Importing Lineations
Lineations containing location information can be imported from files stored on your computer
or a network location in .csv or text formats. To do this, right-click on the Structural Modelling
folder and select Import Lineations. You will be prompted to select a file.
Leapfrog Geo expects East (X), North (Y), Elev (Z), Trend and Plunge columns. The Polarity
column is optional. The Category column can be used for filtering data once it has been
imported.
Click Finish to import the data. The lineations will appear in the Structural Modelling folder.

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Once the data has been imported, you can reload and append the data and add columns to the
data in a similar manner to drillhole data. See Appending Drillholes, Reloading Drillhole Data
and Importing Columns for more information.

Displaying Structural Data

Planar structural data is displayed as disks and lineations are displayed as cones. There are
several ways to change how this data is displayed. In the scene below, planar structural data is
displayed using the Flat colour option, with positive (red) and negative (blue) sides shown:

You can change the colours used to display the positive and negative sides using the controls in
the shape list. You can also display the data points as Thick disks, Flat disks or as Outlined flat
disks. You can change the Disk radius and the Disk size using the controls in the shape
properties panel.
Another way of displaying planar structural data is to display the categories as different colours:

You can change the colours used to display the different categories by clicking on Edit Colours
in the shape list. In the window that appears, click on the colour chip for each category and
change it as described in Single Colour Display.

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To set multiple categories to a single colour, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the colour
chips you wish to change, then click on one of the colour chips. The colour changes you
make will be made to all selected categories.

The categories displayed can also be filtered by other columns in the data table, as described in
Filtering Data Using Values and Categories.
In the scene below, lineations are displayed using the Flat colour option in green:

Click the colour chip to change the colour used to display the cones in the shape list or select
one of the table’s columns:

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The length of the cones displayed in the scene is set in the properties panel. This can be a Fixed
Length, defined by the Cone length setting, or it can be scaled using the values from one of the
table’s columns:

Another way of displaying lineations is to display the categories as different colours:

You can change the colours used to display the different categories by clicking on Edit Colours
in the shape list. In the window that appears, click on the colour chip for each category and
change it as described in Single Colour Display.

To set multiple categories to a single colour, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the colour
chips you wish to change, then click on one of the colour chips. The colour changes you
make will be made to all selected categories.

The categories displayed can also be filtered by other columns in the data table, as described in
Filtering Data Using Values and Categories.

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Viewing Statistics on Structural Data

To view statistics on structural data and lineations, right-click on a table and select Statistics.
The following options are available:

See the Analysing Data topic for more information on each option:
l Table of Statistics
l Scatter Plots
l Q-Q Plots
l Box Plots

Bingham Analysis
The Bingham Analysis option shows the value, trend and plunge for each of the eigenvectors,
along with the Bingham mean plane and best-fit great circle:

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You can select specific rows and copy them to the clipboard or copy all data to the clipboard.
You can also export the data in *.csv format.

Fisher Statistics
The Fisher Statistics option shows the Fisher mean plane and confidence for the data in the
selected table:

You can select specific rows and copy them to the clipboard or copy all data to the clipboard.
You can also export the data in *.csv format.

Assigning Structural Data to Categories

There are two ways to initiate structural data selection: from the data object in the project
tree/shape list and from a stereonet. The advantage of initiating structural data selection
from a stereonet is that the data will be displayed both on the stereonet and in the scene
window. This provides the most flexibility for analysing what data belongs to what category.
See Selecting Data in the Stereonet and Using the Scene Window with the Stereonet for
more information.

If you wish to assign planar structural data points or lineations to categories, right-click on the
data table in the project tree and select New Category Selection. First, select the Source
Column. If you select an existing column as the Source Column, you can assign selected data
points to existing categories or create new categories. If you select <None> for the Source
Column, you will have to define each category manually.

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Select points by clicking on the Select points tool ( ), then drawing over those points in the
scene:

Once you have selected points, you can assign them to existing categories or create new ones.
To create a new category, click on the Assign to > Create New Category button:

Enter a name for the new category and click OK.

When you have finished selecting points and adding them to categories, close the Category
Selection window to close the editor.

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Editing the Orientation of Planar Structural Data

If you need to edit the orientation of planar structural data points, you can do so in two ways:
l Edit the data in the table directly by double-clicking on the structural data table in the
project tree. See Working with Data Tables.
l Edit the structural data orientation in the scene.
To edit the structural data in the scene, right-click on the table in the project tree and select Edit
Orientation in Scene. If the table is displayed in the scene, in the shape list, click on the Edit
button ( ). The Planar Structural Data window will appear in the scene, together with
controls for editing the data points. To edit a data point, click on it. Information about the
selected point will be displayed in the Planar Structural Data window, together with controls in
the scene you can use to adjust the point:

You can also add new data points in the same manner described in Creating New Planar
Structural Data Tables.

Declustering Planar Structural Data

If a planar structural data table contains multiple duplicate or near-duplicate measurements,
you can create a declustered structural data set that will make the table easier to work with.
Declustering is intended to work with large, machine-collected data sets rather than smaller
sets that might be edited manually.
Declustering preserves the original data table and creates the set as a “filter” by applying two
parameters: the Spatial search radius and the Angular tolerance.
l The Spatial search radius determines the size of the declustering space. All points inside the
Spatial search radius are compared searching for duplicates.

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l The Angular tolerance measures whether points have the same or similar orientation. The
orientation of all points inside the Spatial search radius is measured and the mean taken. If a
point’s orientation is less than the Angular tolerance from the mean, then the point is
regarded as a duplicate. The point that is retained is the one that is closest to the mean.
When a structural data set has a numeric column that gives some indication of the
measurement’s uncertainty, this column can be used to prioritise values. Select the Priority
column and set how the values should be handled.
Another factor in declustering the points is the category columns selected. When you choose
multiple category columns, all criteria must match for points to be regarded as duplicates. What
this means is that points will be kept if they have different category values in just one column,
even if they meet the criteria for duplicates established by the Spatial search radius and the
Angular tolerance and match in other columns. For example, in this table, assume that
applying the Spatial search radius and the Angular tolerance parameters without using the
Lithology category results in three points. However, including the Lithology column results in
five points, indicated by the colours:

The more columns you select, the lower the likelihood that points will be regarded as duplicate.
The declustered set can be used like an ordinary structural data table. However, it is a filter on a
planar structural data table and can be used as such when the parent table is displayed in the
scene. For example, here the filters available for the planar structural data table include the
query filters ( ) defined for the table as well as the declustered set ( ):

To create a declustered structural data set, right-click on the Structural Modelling folder and
select New Declustered Structural Data. Select the source data table and a query filter, if
required. Set the parameters and the columns you wish to use, then click OK. The declustered
set will be added to the Structural Modelling folder.
Edit the set by right-clicking on it in the project tree and selecting Edit Declustered Structural
Data.

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Setting Elevation for Structural Data

You can set the elevation for planar structural data points or lineations by projecting the data
onto a surface. Any elevation data in the data table will be overwritten by the elevation values
from the selected surface.
To set the elevation for planar structural data points or lineations, right-click on the table in the
project tree and select Set Elevation. The Set Elevation from Surface window will appear:

Select from the surfaces available in the project.

Unprojected points are data points that do not vertically intersect the selected surface. There
are two options for handling these points:
l Leave the elevation field empty.
l Assign a fixed elevation value.
Click OK to set elevation values.

Estimating Planar Structural Data

You can generate a set of planar structural measurements from points, polylines and GIS lines.
To do this, right-click on the points or lines object in the project tree and select Estimate
Structural Data. In the window that appears, enter a name for the structural data table, then
click OK. The new structural data table will appear in the project tree and you can view and edit
it as described in Displaying Structural Data and Editing the Orientation of Planar Structural
Data.

Meshes
In Leapfrog Geo, meshes are used to represent surfaces in the form of vertices and triangles that
define the 3D shape of the surface. Meshes can be open or closed. Meshes are generated as
part of the model-building process, but can also be imported into a project or created directly in
the project. Leapfrog Geo has several tools for adjusting meshes.
The Meshes folder contains all meshes imported into Leapfrog Geo and created in Leapfrog
Geo outside of the model building process.

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Two types of meshes are stored in the Meshes folder:

l Non-editable meshes ( ) are meshes imported into Leapfrog Geo and meshes created in
Leapfrog Geo from the moving plane, Meshes > Mesh Operations tools and by extracting
mesh parts from other surfaces in the project.
l Editable meshes ( ) are created in Leapfrog Geo from data objects such as points data, GIS
data and polylines. Editable meshes can be refined by adding more data. Editable meshes
can be interpolated meshes (using FastRBF) or triangulated meshes (using Delaunay
triangulation). Interpolated meshes can also be created from structural data and values
objects.
The rest of this topic is divided into:
l Cleaning Up a Mesh
l Importing a Mesh
l Reloading a Mesh
l Displaying Surfaces
l Importing Meshes from Central
l Exporting Meshes

Cleaning Up a Mesh
There are several options for cleaning up a mesh that can be applied to meshes imported into
Leapfrog Geo and to non-editable meshes created in Leapfrog Geo.
To clean up a mesh, double-click on the mesh in the Meshes folder or right-click on the mesh
and select Open. The Cleanup Mesh window will be displayed:

The Cleanup Mesh window will also be displayed when you import meshes.
The first option, Combine identical vertices, is intended for snapping cases where vertices
occupy the exact same point in space. When enabled, vertices that have the exact same
coordinates will be merged.

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When enabled, Combine identical vertices occurs before the other processing actions in
the Cleanup Mesh window.

The next option, Remove self-intersections for volumes, retriangulates self-intersecting

triangles and trims away remaining open surfaces, whether they lie inside or outside the mesh.
Before applying the Remove self-intersections for volumes option, check whether the mesh is
open or closed. To do this, right-click on it in the project tree and select Properties. Closed
should be True:

A mesh may appear to be closed in the scene but the Closed property will be false. Such a mesh
may be made up of open parts that do not join up perfectly to make a closed mesh. If Remove
self-intersections for volumes is enabled for such a mesh, it may disappear when it is trimmed.
Remove self-intersections for volumes should not be enabled for surface-like open meshes.
You may wish to enable Remove self-intersections for volumes if a mesh is reporting as open
but is more volume-like than surface-like. Such a mesh may have a single open part that needs
to be removed, or it may have open parts that line up perfectly and can be retriangulated to
form a closed mesh.
The next four options are automatically applied to meshes created in or imported into Leapfrog
Geo:
l Consistently orient faces ensures that a mesh can be used for inside/outside testing.
l Remove non-vertex points removes points that are not used by any triangles.
l Remove degenerate faces removes triangles with duplicate vertices.
l Orient concentric parts ensures that internal parts have the correct orientation.
Other options are:
l Invert mesh orientation reverses the polarity of the mesh.
l Remove vertical edges removes any vertical faces from the mesh boundary.
l Rotate locations about X axis lets you rotate the mesh 90 degrees clockwise or
anticlockwise.
l Move Mesh lets you offset the mesh by a vector. Tick the Move Mesh box and enter the
required values. The offset values can be changed by opening the Clean Mesh window once
again.
Select the options required, then click OK.

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The mesh will be added to the project tree under the Meshes folder.

Importing a Mesh
Mesh formats Leapfrog Geo supports include:
l Leapfrog Geo Attribute Binary Mesh Formats (*.msh, *.ara)
l Datamine Files (*.asc, *.dm)
l DXF Polyface Files (11/12 [AC1009]) (*.dxf)
l Gemcom Files (*.tri)
l Alias Wavefront Object Files (*.obj)
l Surpac DTM Files (*.dtm)
l GOCAD Files (*.ts)
l Leapfrog Model Files (*.lfm)
l Micromine Files (*.dat)
l Bentley Drawing Files (v8) (*.dgn)
l AutoCAD Drawing Files (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
l Vulcan Files (*.00t) (with Maptek Link)

If you have the Maptek Link extension, you can also import meshes in VULCAN .00t format.
Contact Customer Support as described in Getting Support for more information about the
Maptek Link extension.

Once a mesh has been imported to the project, you can evaluate it against any interpolant or
distance function in the project. See Evaluations for more information.
To import a mesh, right-click on the Meshes folder and select Import Mesh. Navigate to the
folder that contains the mesh file and select the file. You can select multiple files using the Shift
and Ctrl keys. Click Open to import the file.
The Cleanup Mesh window will be displayed. See Cleaning Up a Mesh. Select the options
required, then click OK.
The mesh will be added to the project tree under the Meshes folder.

Meshes with Textures

Leapfrog Geo can import OBJ meshes with textures. If you have the Maptek Link extension, you
can also import Vulcan meshes with textures.

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Textured OBJ Meshes

For OBJ meshes, a materials file (.mtl) is required, together with the referenced images. Image
formats supported include:
l PNG Files (*.png)
l JPEG Files (*.jpg, *.jpeg)
l TIFF and GeoTIFF Files (*.tiff, *.tif)
l Windows Bitmap Files (*.bmp)
l Graphics Interchange Format Files (*.gif)
The texture is automatically imported when the mesh is imported and will appear in the project
tree under the mesh.

Textured Vulcan Meshes

This feature is only available if you have the Maptek Link extension.

When importing a Vulcan mesh that contains a path to an associated texture, Leapfrog Geo will
also import the texture. If the path to the texture does not exist, you can import it once the mesh
has been imported. Do this by right-clicking on the mesh in the project tree and selecting
Import Texture. Navigate to the folder containing the texture file and click Open. The texture
will be imported and stored in the project tree as part of the mesh.

Reloading a Mesh
Meshes imported into Leapfrog Geo and created from extracting mesh parts can be reloaded.
To do this, right-click on the mesh in the project tree and select Reload Mesh. Navigate to the
file that should be used and click Open.

Displaying Surfaces
Leapfrog Geo assigns different colours to each side of a surface.
A basic mesh will have an inside (coloured red) and an outside (coloured blue):

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In the case of contact surfaces, each side will be assigned a lithology. “Unknown” will be used if
multiple lithologies are contacted. Contact surfaces can be displayed using the assigned
lithologies or the younging direction:

When a contact surface is displayed by its younging direction, the younger side of the surface
will be displayed in green and the older side in brown.
Veins can also be displayed coloured with the thickness values.
Surfaces that are part of a geological model or interpolant are, by default, displayed clipped to
the model boundary:

Disable the Clipped surface button ( ) to view the surface unclipped.

Draping an Image on a Mesh

You can drape images on any mesh in the Meshes folder. To do this, right-click on the mesh in
the Meshes folder and select one of the Drape Image options.
l For the Import Image option, you will be prompted for a file location. Navigate to the folder
containing the image you wish to drape, select the file and click Open. Set georeferencing
information for the image, if required, then click OK. See Importing a Map or Image for
more information on georeferencing images. The imported image will appear in the project
tree under the mesh.
l For the Select Existing Image option, select from the images available in the project and
click OK. A hyperlink to the image will appear in the project tree under the mesh.
You can drape as many images as required. When the mesh is displayed in the scene, you will be
able to select any draped images from the list of display options.

When you import and georeference an image, you can then export it as a GeoTIFF. To do
this, right-click on it in the project tree and select Export. You will be prompted for a
filename and location. Click Save.

Importing Meshes from Central

When you are working on a Central project, you can import meshes from other projects on the
same server. In this way, you can easily share data between projects and, if the mesh is out-of-
date, you can reload it from Central.

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Meshes that can be imported from Central are those that have been:
l Published to Central as part of a revision via Leapfrog or
l Uploaded to the project’s Data Room via the Central Portal
For more information on the Central Portal, see the Central Portal online help.

When you publish a project revision to Central from Leapfrog Geo and wish to make a mesh
available for use in other projects, make sure you select that mesh from the objects in the
project:

For example, in the project above, the meshes that will be available for use in other projects
on the same server are the Topography mesh and the meshes that are part of the Lithology,
AG_gpt and AS_ppm models. The Distance mesh and the Clipped mesh will not be
available.

Importing Central Meshes

To import a mesh from Central, first make sure you are already connected to Central. Then
right-click on the Meshes folder and select Import Mesh From Central. In the window that
appears, select one of the projects in the repository.

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In the next window, there are two options, selecting files from the Project History tab and
selecting files from the Files list:

In the Project History tab, select a revision to view its published objects, then click on a model
to load its list of surfaces.
The Files tab shows any files that have been uploaded to the Central project’s Data Room:

Whether you wish to import files from a revision or from the Data Room, use the Shift and Ctrl
keys to select as many objects as required. Click Import to import the objects, which will be
saved into the Meshes folder.

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A different colour is used to indicate meshes imported from Central ( ), and viewing the
properties shows you what version of the project the mesh came from:

When you import a mesh from Central, Leapfrog Geo checks to see if the mesh is the latest
version from that branch. Out-of-date meshes ( ) are indicated in the project tree.

Updating Out-of-Date Meshes

There are two options for updating an out-of-date mesh:
l Reload Latest on Branch imports the newest mesh available on the branch the out-of-date
mesh was imported from.
l Reload From Central displays the project history and allows you to pick any point in time on
any branch.
Right-click on a mesh and choose one of these options.
If you have selected multiple meshes in the project tree, the Reload Latest on Branch option is
the only one available:

Exporting Meshes
Leapfrog Geo exports meshes in the following formats:
l Leapfrog Files (*.msh)
l Gocad Files (*.ts)
l DXF Files (*.dxf)
l Surpac Files (*.dtm, *.str)
l Gemcom Files (*.tri)

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l Datamine Files (*pt.asc, *tr.asc)

l Micromine Files (*MMpt.dat, *MMtr.dat)
l DXF Polyface Files (MineCAD) (*.dxf)
l Alias Wavefront Object Files (*.obj)
l Drawing Files (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
l Bentley Drawing Files (v8) (*.dgn)

If you have the Maptek Link extension, you can also export meshes in VULCAN .00t format.
Contact Customer Support as described in Getting Support for more information about the
Maptek Link extension.

You can export single meshes or batch export meshes from the Meshes folder or from individual
models. Each of these is described below:
l Exporting a Single Mesh
l Exporting Multiple Meshes from the Meshes Folder
l Exporting Multiple Meshes from Models

Exporting a Single Mesh

To export a mesh, right-click on the mesh and select Export. The Export Mesh Parts window
will appear:

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An Export clipped mesh option is available for meshes that are clipped to a boundary:

If the quality of the mesh produced is not acceptable, clip the mesh as described in Clipping
a Mesh, then export the mesh.

Select the Parts to Export, then click OK. You will be prompted for a filename and location.
When exporting a mesh that has multiple parts, you can distinguish between the different parts
by clicking on them in the Export Mesh Parts window. Here, the mesh was added to the scene
before the Export Mesh Parts window was opened. Clicking on a mesh part in the list selects
that part in the scene:

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If the mesh is not in the scene when the Export Mesh Parts window is opened, selecting a part
in the list will display it in the scene without reference to the other parts of the mesh:

Use the Shift and Ctrl keys to select and view multiple mesh parts in the scene:

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Exporting Multiple Meshes from the Meshes Folder

To export multiple meshes from those in the Meshes folder, right-click on the Meshes folder
and select Export Meshes. In the window that appears, select the meshes you wish to export:

The filename that will be used for each mesh is shown in the Filenames column. To change the
filename for any of the meshes, click on its name in the Filenames column.
Next, select the format required and where to save the exported meshes. Available formats are:
l Leapfrog Model Files (*.lfm)
l Leapfrog Files (*.msh)
l Gocad Files (*.ts)
l DXF Files (*.dxf)
l Surpac Files (*.dtm, *.str)
l Gemcom Files (*.tri)
l Datamine Files (*pt.asc, *tr.asc)
l Micromine Files (*MMpt.dat, *MMtr.dat)
l DXF Polyface Files (MineCAD) (*.dxf)
l Alias Wavefront Object Files (*.obj)
l Drawing Files (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
l Bentley Drawing Files (v8) (*.dgn)
Click Export to save the meshes.

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Exporting Multiple Meshes from Models

You can export multiple meshes from individual geological models, numeric models, combined
models and static models. To export meshes in this way, right-click on a model or interpolant
and select Export. In the window that appears, select the volumes and surfaces you wish to
export:

For geological models, if you wish to export surfaces other than the output volumes, untick the
Only Output Volumes option.
For faulted geological models, you also can select from the faulted volumes by ticking the
Faulted Volumes box:

The filename that will be used for each mesh is shown in the Filenames column. To change the
filename for any of the meshes, click on its name in the Filenames column.

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Next, select the format required and where to save the exported meshes. Available formats are:
l Leapfrog Model Files (*.lfm)
l Leapfrog Files (*.msh)
l Gocad Files (*.ts)
l DXF Files (*.dxf)
l Surpac Files (*.dtm, *.str)
l Gemcom Files (*.tri)
l Datamine Files (*pt.asc, *tr.asc)
l Micromine Files (*MMpt.dat, *MMtr.dat)
l DXF Polyface Files (MineCAD) (*.dxf)
l Alias Wavefront Object Files (*.obj)
l Drawing Files (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
l Bentley Drawing Files (v8) (*.dgn)
For any of the export options other than Leapfrog Model Files format, you can save the meshes
as a zip file.

The Leapfrog Model File format exports a single *.lfm file. If the file is imported into the
Meshes folder, each output volume will appear as a single mesh.

Click Export to save the meshes.

Modifying Surfaces
This topic describes aspects of modifying surfaces in Leapfrog Geo. It is divided into:
l Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo
l Adding Data to Surfaces
l Honouring Surface Contacts
l Global Trends
l Structural Trends
l Editing Surfaces with Polylines
l Editing Surfaces with Structural Data

Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo

In Leapfrog Geo, meshes are used to represent surfaces in the form of vertices and triangles that
define the 3D shape of the surface. The resolution of a surface is controlled by the size of the
triangles used to create a surface. A lower surface resolution value means smaller triangles and,

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therefore, a finer resolution. A higher surface resolution value will take less time to process but
the surface may not show the level of detail required.
When a surface is imported, Leapfrog Geo automatically sets a surface resolution based on the
information in the file. It is not possible to change the resolution of surfaces imported into
Leapfrog Geo. The exception is elevation grids (see Importing an Elevation Grid).
When surfaces are created, Leapfrog Geo sets a default resolution based on the data available.
You can set a lower value, but calculations will take longer. In addition, the resolution for many
surfaces can be adaptive; that is, areas closer to data will have a finer resolution than areas
further away from data.
To see the effect of different resolution settings, consider a simple geological model of three
rock types. Here, the surface resolution is set to 50 and the adaptive isosurfacer is disabled:

Here, the resolution has been reduced, which results in smaller triangles:

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For both resolution settings above, the triangles are the same size everywhere in each surface,
even where real data is available. Once the adaptive isosurfacer has been enabled, the triangles
closer to the drillholes are smaller than those further away:

Areas of the surface that have large triangles indicate that there is less data in those areas to
guide the interpolation of the surface.
In Leapfrog Geo, the resolution for different types of surfaces can be controlled as follows:
l For geological models, a resolution can be set for the model as a whole, but individual
surfaces can have different settings. See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model.
l For interpolants, the resolution of the output isosurfaces is controlled by a single setting that
can be overridden for individual surfaces. See Output Settings for an RBF Interpolant and
Indicator RBF Interpolant Surfacing and Volume Options.
l The resolution can be changed for editable interpolated meshes ( ) and can be adaptive.
See Interpolated Meshes.
l When the topography has been defined using multiple data sources, the resolution can be
set and the adaptive option is available. See Changing Topography Settings.

Adding Data to Surfaces

Many surfaces can be refined by adding points, structural data, GIS data and polylines. If a
surface can be modified in this way, an Add menu will appear for the object when you right-
click on it in the project tree. For example, the Add menu for this contact surface shows the data
types that can be used to refine the surface:

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Select the type of data you wish to use to modify the surface. Leapfrog Geo will display all the
suitable objects in the project. Select the required object and click OK. A hyperlink to the added
data will appear under the surface in the project tree. The added data can be removed from the
surface by expanding the surface in the project tree, then right-clicking on the hyperlinked data
object and selecting Remove.

Honouring Surface Contacts

In Leapfrog Geo, surfaces can be created from drillhole data, points data, structural data, GIS
data and polylines. When surfaces are created from several different objects, it may be desirable
to snap the surface to some data objects but not to others.
There are several options for snapping surfaces to data:
l Off. The surface does not snap to the data used to create it.
l All data. The surface snaps to data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surface.
l Drilling only. The surface snaps to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surface. For
example, the surface will honour points data derived from drillhole data, but not points data
imported into the Points folder.
l Custom. The surface snaps to selected data objects within the Maximum snap distance.

Snapping forces surfaces to honour the specified contacts, moving triangles on the surface
so that the surface precisely intersects the contact. For example, snapping is disabled for the
surface on the left, but enabled for the surface on the right. The points used to generate the
surface are shown in red, and the triangles are displayed so you can see how snapping to
data affects the surface:

When snapping is enabled, the Maximum snap distance is used to determine what data
should affect the surface. The Maximum snap distance is, by default, set to half of the
Surface resolution setting, but you can adjust that up or down, if required.
In this image, three surfaces are shown, along with the points used to generate the surface
(red). The grey surface is the surface that results when snapping is Off. For the yellow
surface, snapping to the points is enabled and the Maximum snap distance has been set to
a high value, resulting in the yellow surface snapping to the distant point indicated by the
arrow. Snapping to points is also enabled for the blue surface, but the Maximum snap

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distance has been set to a lower value, so that the surface snaps to some close points, but
does not snap to the distant point.

While the most suitable snapping option is always project- and purpose-specific, if you have
sufficient drilling data, snapping to Drilling only is recommended. This option gives the
highest priority to the input data itself while still allowing the surface to be influenced by
manual interpretations. Contrary to the All data snapping option, the Drilling only option
also reduces the potential for complications resulting from contradictory data (e.g. the
drilling data indicates a surface contact is in one place, but a polyline indicates it’s
somewhere else).
Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data.

For example, here the Snap to data has been set to Drilling only for a mesh created from
multiple data objects:

Note that the only objects Snap is enabled for are the contacts derived from drillhole data.

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Here, Snap to data has been set to Custom, which makes it possible to enable Snap for only the
selected data objects:

In Leapfrog Geo, the snap settings for different types of surfaces can be controlled as follows:
l For geological models, Snap to data can be set for the model as a whole, but individual
surfaces can have different settings. For more information, see:
o Editing a Geological Model
o Surfacing Options for Deposits and Erosions
o Surfacing Options for Intrusions
o Surfacing Options for Veins
o Surfacing Options for Faults
o Changing Fault Inputs

l For editable interpolated meshes and offset meshes ( ), Snap to data can be set by double-
clicking on the mesh and changing the settings in the General tab. See Refining an
Interpolated Mesh and Offset Meshes for more information.

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Global Trends
In Leapfrog Geo, many surfaces can be adjusted by applying a trend to the surface. To do this,
add the surface you wish to adjust to the scene so that it can be used in setting the trend.
Double-click on the surface in the project tree and select the Trend tab. Here, the Trend tab is
displayed for a contact surface:

Often the easiest way to apply a trend is to click on the Draw plane line button ( ) and draw a
plane line in the scene in the direction in which you wish to adjust the surface. You may need to
rotate the scene to see the plane properly.
The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.
l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line
on the moving plane.
l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.
Once you have adjusted the plane to represent the trend you wish to use, click the Set From
Plane button to copy the moving plane settings.
The Set to list contains a number of different options Leapfrog Geo has generated based on the
data used in the project. Isotropic is the default option used when the surface was created.
Settings made to other surfaces in the project will also be listed, which makes it easy to apply the
same settings to many surfaces.
Click OK to apply the changes.

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How the moving plane can be used to adjust a surface in this manner is illustrated by the
following intrusive contact surface:

The intrusion surface has two bodies that are not connected, and we can apply a trend to
connect the two parts. Here, the intrusion surface has been hidden in the scene and the scene
rotated to line up the QzP segments. A plane line can then be drawn through the QzP
segments:

Using the plane settings to adjust the surface results in the two parts of the intrusion joining up:

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Structural Trends
Structural trends create a flat ellipsoid anisotropy that varies in direction with its inputs. This
topic describes working with structural trends. It is divided into:
l Creating a Structural Trend
l Displaying a Structural Trend
l Applying a Structural Trend

Creating a Structural Trend

To create a new structural trend, right-click on the Structural Trends folder (in the Structural
Modelling folder) and select New Structural Trend. The Structural Trend window will appear:

Structural trends can be created from surfaces and from structural data. Click Add to select
from the suitable inputs available in the project. The list of inputs will be displayed:

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Tick the box for each input required, then click OK. The selected inputs will be added to the
Structural Trend window:

The Strength parameter determines the shape of the ellipsoid, and the Range parameter
indicates how far the influence of this mesh reaches. If the Trend Type is Non-decaying, the
distance from the mesh no longer affects the anisotropy and the Range value cannot be set.
Trends that are Strongest along meshes or Blending can include a global trend. To set this,
click on the Global Mean Trend tab.

You can enter the trend manually or add the moving plane to the scene and set the trend using
the moving plane, as described in Global Trends.

The Compatibility setting determines the algorithm used to create the structural trend.
Structural trends created in earlier versions of Leapfrog Geo (before 2.2) used the Version 1
algorithm. When these structural trends are upgraded, you can change them so they use
Version 2, which may be desirable if adding more data to the trend results in significant
changes in areas that are not close to new data.

Enter a Name for the trend and click OK. The new trend will appear under the Structural
Trends folder.

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Displaying a Structural Trend

When displayed in the scene, the trend is shown using disks placed on a regular grid:

The orientation of the disk gives the direction of the anisotropy. The size of a disk is proportional
to the anisotropy strength. Where there are no disks (or the size is very small) the trend is
isotropic.
If the Trend Type is set to Non-decaying, the distance from the mesh no longer affects the
anisotropy and all disks have the same size:

The Blending option requires multiple meshes and blends them according to their individual
strength settings. 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.

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Applying a Structural Trend

To apply a structural trend to an interpolated editable mesh or an interpolant, double-click on
the object in the project tree and click on the Trend tab:

To apply a structural trend to an intrusion contact surface, enable Show additional surfacing
options in the Surfacing tab, then click on the Trend tab.
Click on Structural Trend, then select the required trend from the list. Click OK to apply the
trend to the surface.
When a structural trend is applied, surfaces may appear distorted further away from the data:

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If this is the case, experiment with the Outside value setting. The Outside value is the long-
range mean value of the data. Setting a value of -1 for intrusions (where the positive values are
on the inside) and +1 for other surfaces will result in a smoother surface in most cases. For
example, here, the Outside value has been set to -1 for this intrusion, resulting in a much
smoother surface:

Editing Surfaces with Polylines

In Leapfrog Geo, many surfaces can be edited using polylines, including contact surfaces,
geological model extents and editable meshes.
To edit a surface with a polyline, it is a good idea to first add the object you wish to edit to the
scene and draw a slice across the scene where you plan to edit the surface. Next, right-click on
the surface in the project tree and select Edit > With Polyline.
The drawing toolbar will appear for the type of polyline selected and a new polyline will be
added to the scene. Draw the polyline and adjust it as described in Drawing in the Scene, then
click the Save button ( ) to view the effect of the polyline on the surface. To remove the
polyline from the surface, expand the surface in the project tree. Right-click on the polyline
object and select Remove.

In cases where you have existing polyline edits (control points), you can import them and add
them to the surface. To do this, import the polylines to the Polylines folder, then add them to
the surface by right-clicking on the surface and selecting Add > Polyline.

How a polyline can be used to edit a surface can be illustrated by the following surface, where a
small volume is disconnected from the main surface:

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First, a slice is drawn through the surface where it will be edited:

Next, a polyline is created, using two lines to represent contacts that link up the surfaces:

When the polyline edits are saved, the surface is updated to reflect the edits:

It is best to keep polyline edits to a minimum, as small edits can have significant effects on the
shapes of surfaces.

If editing a surface with a polyline results in a distorted surface, use the surface and normal
ribbons to check the orientation of the polyline and its segments. See Tangents and
Ribbons for more information.

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When you save the polyline, the object will be updated to reflect the additional points. The
polyline will be added to the project tree as part of the object that was edited. You can edit the
polyline by double-clicking on it or by right-clicking and selecting Edit Polyline.

Editing Surfaces with Structural Data

In Leapfrog Geo, many surfaces can be edited using planar structural data points drawn in the
scene. Surfaces that can be edited in this way include contact surfaces, model extents and
interpolated editable meshes. There are two ways to do this:
l If you have a structural data table created in or imported into Leapfrog Geo that you want to
use to adjust the surface, right-click on the surface in the project tree and select Add >
Structural Data. You will be prompted to select from the structural data tables available in
the project.
l If you want to create structural data points to use to adjust the surface, right-click on the
surface in the project tree and select Edit > With Structural Data.
To edit a surface with structural data using the second option, it is a good idea to first add the
object you wish to edit to the scene. Next, right-click on the surface in the project tree and
select the Edit > With Structural Data option.
The structural data toolbar will appear and a new structural data object will be added to the
scene. Draw the structural data points and adjust them as described in Creating New Planar
Structural Data Tables, then click the Save button ( ) to view the effect on the surface.
Structural data tables created in this way cannot be used by other objects in the project until the
table has been shared. To do this, right-click on the table in the project tree and select Share.
The structural data table will be saved to the Structural Modelling folder.
To remove the structural data from the surface, expand the surface in the project tree. Right-
click on the structural data object and select Remove.

Non-Editable Meshes
Leapfrog Geo provides you with several tools for creating non-editable meshes:
l Mesh from the Moving Plane
l Combining Meshes
l Clipping a Volume
l Clipping a Mesh
l Merging 2D Meshes
l Extracting Mesh Parts
These tools produce non-editable meshes ( ).

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Mesh from the Moving Plane

When a vertical wall, flat fault plane or other flat geological surface is required, the moving
plane can be used to create a simple mesh.
To create a new mesh from the moving plane, first display the plane in the scene by clicking on
the Show Plane button ( ). Use the controls in the scene to position the plane, then right-click
on the Meshes folder and select Mesh From Moving Plane. The Mesh From Plane window will
appear:

Set the Resolution for the mesh, enter a name and click OK. The new mesh will appear in the
Meshes folder.
See Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo for more information on the resolution setting.

Combining Meshes
To create a new mesh from two existing closed meshes, right-click on the Meshes folder and
select Mesh Operations > Boolean Volume. The Boolean Volume window will appear:

The Available list shows all closed meshes available in the project. Select a mesh by double-
clicking on it or by clicking on it, then on the arrow.
The Operation type can be Intersect or Union.
Click OK to save the new mesh, which will appear in the Meshes folder. To edit the mesh,
double-click on it. The Boolean Volume window will appear.
When any of the meshes used to create the volume is modified, the volume will be updated.

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Clipping a Volume
To clip a closed mesh using another mesh, right-click on the Meshes folder and select Mesh
Operations > Clip Volume. The Clip Volume window will appear. Select the meshes you wish
to use and whether to retain the inside or outside of the clipped mesh.
Click OK to save the new mesh, which will appear in the Meshes folder. To edit the mesh,
double-click on it.
When either of the meshes used to create the clipped volume is modified, the clipped volume
will also be updated.

Clipping a Mesh
This option creates a new mesh that consists of the parts of a Clip mesh that are inside, outside
or overlap with the Using mesh. To clip one mesh using another mesh or boundary in this
manner, right-click on the Meshes folder and select Mesh Operations > Clip Mesh. The Clip
Mesh window will appear:

Select the meshes to use, then choose whether to retain the inside or the outside of the clipped
mesh. Tick the Include overlap box to include the overlap between the two meshes as part of
the new mesh.
Click OK to save the new mesh, which will appear in the Meshes folder. To edit the mesh,
double-click on it. The Clip Mesh window will appear.
When either of the meshes used to create the clipped mesh is modified, the clipped mesh will be
updated.

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Merging 2D Meshes
This option creates a new mesh from two or more open meshes and specifies the priority in
which input meshes will be used to create the final mesh. This is useful when, for example, a
single mesh is required that represents the topography (with less detail) and the area around a
site (with more detail). To merge 2D meshes, right-click on the Meshes folder and select Mesh
Operations > Merge Meshes 2D. In the window that appears, select the meshes you wish to
use.

If you use more than one detailed mesh or base mesh, the meshes higher in the list will have
higher priority over those lower down in the list.
The Buffer distance value determines the zone in which the selected meshes are merged and
the Resolution setting determines the resolution of that zone. For example, here the Buffer
distance is 250:

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Click OK to save the new mesh, which will appear in the Meshes folder. To edit the mesh,
double-click on it.
When any of the meshes used to create the merged mesh are modified, the merged mesh will
be updated.

Extracting Mesh Parts

To extract the triangles from a mesh and create a new mesh, right-click on the surface and
select Extract Mesh Parts. The Extract Mesh Parts window will appear:

The Extract clipped mesh option is only available for meshes that are clipped to a boundary.
The largest part is initially selected. You can sort the mesh parts by Volume or by Area by clicking
the heading of the respective column. Other options are:
l Select all parts by clicking the Select All button. To de-select all parts click the Remove All
button.
l Inside-out parts have negative volume. To remove them, click the Remove Inside-Out
button.
l To remove parts smaller than a given size, first click the Select All button. Select the last item
you want to keep and click the Remove Below Current button.
Click OK to save the new mesh, which will appear in the Meshes folder. The mesh generated is a
non-editable mesh ( ).

Meshes created in this way are not connected to the mesh they were created from. Changes
to the original mesh will not be reflected in the selected parts.

If the quality of the mesh produced is not acceptable, clip the mesh as described in Clipping a
Mesh.

Interpolated Meshes
An interpolated mesh is a type of editable mesh ( ). An interpolated mesh uses FastRBF to fit
and interpolate surface data. The FastRBF is useful for creating meshes from sparse datasets or
when data has large areas where there are no points. Interpolated meshes can be created from
points data, GIS data, polylines, structural data and values objects.
Interpolated meshes can be edited by adding more data to the mesh and changing settings.

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This topic describes creating and working with interpolated meshes. It is divided into:
l Creating an Interpolated Mesh
l Refining an Interpolated Mesh
l Surface Resolution Settings
l Snap Settings
l Other Options

Creating an Interpolated Mesh

The steps for creating a mesh from data in the project are similar, regardless of the data used to
create the mesh. The exception is creating an offset mesh, which requires additional
parameters. See Offset Meshes for more information.
To create an interpolated mesh from data in the project, right-click on the Meshes folder and
select from the New Mesh options.
Here, a new mesh is being created from points:

Select the required object from the list.

When defining the mesh’s extents, you can set the extents to be independent of other objects in
the project (Own extents) or you can use the extents of another object (Shared with). When
you select the Shared with option, the mesh will be updated when the extents object it shares is
updated.
Leapfrog Geo automatically sets the surface resolution based on the data available in the
project. You can experiment with the surface resolution and adaptive settings once you have
created the mesh. See Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo for more information on the effects
of these settings.
Enter a name for the new mesh and click OK.
If you are creating the mesh from a polyline, you will be prompted to select an existing polyline
or draw a new one. If you draw a new polyline, it will not be able to be used elsewhere in the
project unless it has been shared. To share the polyline, expand the mesh in the project tree,
right-click on the polyline and select Share.
The new mesh will appear in the Meshes folder. Expand the mesh in the project tree to see how
it was made. As further refinements are made to the mesh, that information will also be added to
the mesh in the project tree.

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Refining an Interpolated Mesh

Editable interpolated meshes ( ) can be refined by adding data, as described in Adding Data to
Surfaces. The options available depend on how the mesh was created.
To add data to an editable mesh, right-click on it and select one of the options from the Add
menu. A list of objects available in the project will be displayed. Select the required object and
click OK. The mesh will be updated and the object used to modify it will appear under it in the
project tree.
You can also refine editable interpolated meshes by changing the trend, transforming values,
adjusting the interpolant and changing the boundary. To do this, double-click on the mesh.
The Edit Mesh window will be opened:

See Offset Meshes for the options available for meshes from offset points.

Surface Resolution Settings

See Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo for more information on the Surface resolution
settings in the General tab.

Snap Settings
The mesh can be set to snap to the data objects used to create it. There are four options:
l Off. The mesh does not snap to the data.
l All data. The mesh snaps to data within the Maximum snap distance.
l Drilling only. The mesh snaps only to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole
data within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data. For example, the mesh will
honour points data derived from drillhole data, but not points data imported into the Points
folder.
l Custom. The mesh snaps to selected data objects within the Maximum snap distance.

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Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

When Snap to data is set to Custom, you can then set whether or not Snap is enabled for the
objects used to create the mesh, as discussed in Honouring Surface Contacts. Custom is the
most flexible options as you can select the specific data objects the mesh will or will not snap to.
If you will be exporting the mesh for use in another application, you may wish to adjust the snap
settings.
Data used to create the mesh will appear in the Input list. When you add more data to the mesh,
those objects will also be listed. You can remove those additional objects by expanding the
mesh in the project tree, then right-clicking on the data object and selecting Remove.

Other Options
In the Boundary tab, you can change whether the mesh boundary is independent of other
objects in the project (Own extents) or you can use the extents of another object (Shared with).
When you select the Shared with option, the mesh will be updated when the extents object it
shares is updated.
Options available in other tabs are similar to those available for interpolants. See:
l Structural Trends
l Clipping and Transforming Values for an RBF Interpolant
For information on the parameters in the Interpolants tab, see:
l Interpolant Functions
l The Spheroidal Interpolant Function
l The Linear Interpolant Function

2D Interpolant Meshes
A 2D interpolant can be created using any points object in the project. A 2D interpolant is built
using the same algorithm as the project’s topography surface (see Defining a Topography).
This often this gives a smoother result in less time than when using the same data to build a 3D
interpolated mesh. A 2D interpolant can work with vertically-oriented data such as fault planes,
whereas building a topography is meant to work with primarily horizontal data.

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To create a 2D interpolant, right-click on the Meshes folder and select New 2D Interpolant
Mesh. In the window that appears, select from the points objects available in the project.

The mesh’s extents can be independent of other objects in the project or you can use the
extents of another object. Surface resolution can be adaptive or non-adaptive. You can set a
reference plane to set the direction of the best fit through the data; this is useful when working
with data that is not primarily horizontal.

Offset Meshes
You can create a new interpolated mesh by offsetting an existing mesh with any points object in
the project. To do this, first ensure the points and mesh you wish to use are already in the
project. Next, right-click on the Meshes folder and select New Mesh > From Offset Points. In
the window that appears, select the Mesh and Points to use:

When the mesh is created, it will automatically snap to the points, and points outside the
Distance Limits will be ignored. These settings can be changed once the mesh has been
created.

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An offset mesh may be distorted if points used to offset the mesh lie too far outside the mesh
extents. If this occurs, set a Maximum distance to exclude points far away from the mesh
extents.

Enter a name for the new mesh and click OK. The new mesh will appear in the Meshes folder.
To edit the mesh, double-click on it. The Edit Offset Mesh window will appear:

The mesh can be set to snap to the data objects used to create it. There are four options:
l Off. The mesh does not snap to the data.
l All data. The mesh snaps to data within the Maximum snap distance.
l Drilling only. The mesh snaps only to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole
data within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data. For example, the mesh will
honour points data derived from drillhole data, but not points data imported into the Points
folder.
l Custom. The mesh snaps to selected data objects within the Maximum snap distance.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

When Snap to data is set to Custom, you can then set whether or not Snap is enabled for the
objects used to create the mesh, as discussed in Honouring Surface Contacts. Custom is the
most flexible options as you can select the specific data objects the mesh will or will not snap to.
If you will be exporting the mesh for use in another application, you may wish to adjust the snap
settings.

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Data used to create the mesh will appear in the Input list. When you add more data to the mesh,
those objects will also be listed. You can remove those additional objects by expanding the
mesh in the project tree, then right-clicking on the data object and selecting Remove.
You can modify an offset mesh by adding data, as described in Refining an Interpolated Mesh.

It is not possible to add structural data or polylines with orientation information to an offset
mesh. If you edit an offset mesh with a polyline, your options for editing the polyline will be
limited.

You can also edit the mesh’s boundary, but you cannot apply a trend, clip and transform values
or adjust the interpolant as you can for other interpolated editable meshes.

Triangulated Meshes
A triangulated mesh is a type of editable mesh ( ). A triangulated mesh uses Delaunay
triangulation to create the mesh and can handle more points than an interpolated mesh.
Triangulated meshes can be created from points data, GIS data and polylines. Large datasets
representing horizontal surfaces can be used to create a triangulated mesh.
The steps for creating a mesh from data in the project are similar, regardless of the data used to
create the mesh. To create a triangulated mesh from data in the project, right-click on the
Meshes folder and select from the New Triangulated Mesh options.
Here, a new triangulated mesh is being created from points:

Select the required object from the list.

When defining the mesh’s extents, you can set the extents to be independent of other objects in
the project (Own extents) or you can use the extents of another object (Shared with). When
you select the Shared with option, the mesh will be updated when the extents object it shares is
updated.
The Use error threshold setting lets you exclude data points that fall within the threshold. This
can be useful if you are using a large dataset and you require a more coarse surface that omits
some data. When Use error threshold is disabled, the mesh will follow all the data.

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Here, a mesh created from points has the Use error threshold disabled. The mesh follows all
the points:

Here, a mesh has been created with the Distance set to 20. The mesh ignores points that fall
outside the threshold:

You will be able to change the Use error threshold setting once the mesh has been created.
Enter a name for the new mesh and click OK.
If you are creating the mesh from a polyline, you will be prompted to select an existing polyline
or draw a new one. If you draw a new polyline, it will not be able to be used elsewhere in the
project unless it has been shared. To share the polyline, expand the mesh in the project tree,
right-click on the polyline and select Share.
The new mesh will appear in the Meshes folder and you can edit its settings by double-clicking
on it.
To add data to a triangulated mesh, right-click on it and select one of the options from the Add
menu. A list of objects available in the project will be displayed. Select the required object and
click OK. The mesh will be updated and the object used to modify it will appear under it in the
project tree.

It is not possible to add structural data or polylines with orientation information to a

triangulated mesh. If you edit a triangulated mesh with a polyline, your options for editing
the polyline will be limited.

Elevation Grids
Leapfrog Geo imports and exports elevation grids in common formats.

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Importing an Elevation Grid

Elevation grid formats Leapfrog Geo supports include:
l Arc/Info ASCII Grid Files (*.asc, *.txt)
l Arc/Info Binary Grid Files (*.adf)
l Digital Elevation Model Files (*.dem)
l Surfer ASCII or Binary Grid Files (*.grd)
l SRTM Files (*.hgt)
l ESRI.hdr Labelled Image Files (*.img, *.bil)
l GeoTIFF Image Files (*.tiff, *.tif)
There are two ways to import an elevation grid:
l Import the grid to the Meshes folder. Right-click on the Meshes folder and select Import
Elevation Grid.
l Import the grid as part of creating a topography. Right-click on the Topographies folder and
select New Topography > Import Elevation Grid.
Navigate to the folder that contains the elevation grid file and open the file. The Import
Elevation Grid window will be displayed:

Leapfrog Geo automatically sets a Surface resolution based on the information in the file, but
you can change the value if you wish. A lower value will produce more detail, but calculations
will take longer. See Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo for more information.

When importing an elevation grid, note that the resolution cannot be changed once the file
has been imported.

Data is automatically clipped to the clipping boundary, but you can change how the data is
filtered to suit any bounding box that exists in the project. If you do not wish to clip the data,
untick Clip data to bounding box.

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The Margin value determines how far outside the selected Bounding box the elevation grid will
extend.
The No Data Handling option determines whether NoData values are displayed as gaps or at a
fixed elevation setting.
Click Import. If you are creating a new topography, you will then be prompted to enter a name
for it and click OK.
The elevation grid will be added to the Meshes folder. If you imported the grid as part of
creating a topography, a hyperlink to the grid in the Meshes folder will appear as part of the
defined topography.

Exporting an Elevation Grid

For any mesh in a project, you can export an elevation grid for use in other software. Formats
Leapfrog Geo can export are:
l ARC/Info ASCII Grid (*.asc)
l ESRI.hdr Labelled (*.bil)
l ENVI Raster Image (*.img)
l Surfer ASCII Grid (*.grd)

If you have the Maptek Link extension, you can also export an elevation grid in VULCAN v7
.00g format. Contact Customer Support as described in Getting Support for more
information about this extension.

To export an elevation grid, right-click on the mesh and select Export Elevation Grid. The
Export Grid window will appear:

The Snap to Grid option changes the extents of the exported grid so that they coincide with the
elevation grid spacing.
Enter the information required, then click Export to enter a filename and choose a location and
format for the file.

Thickness Grids
For any mesh in a project, you can export a grid made up of the area between two surfaces.
Formats Leapfrog Geo can export are:

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l ARC/Info ASCII Grid (*.asc)

l ESRI.hdr Labelled (*.bil)
l ENVI Raster Image (*.img)
l Surfer ASCII Grid (*.grd)
To export a thickness grid, right-click on the mesh and select Export Thickness Grid. The
Export Thickness Grid window will appear:

Select the surfaces required from the lists.

Enter the information required, then click Export. You will be prompted for a filename and
location.

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Polylines
Leapfrog Geo imports many common polyline formats and also has tools for drawing and
exporting polylines. This topic describes:
l Creating Polylines
l Displaying Polylines
l Sharing and Unsharing Polylines
l Importing Polylines
l Reloading Polylines
l Exporting Polylines
See Drawing in the Scene for information on drawing and editing polylines.

Creating Polylines
There are three ways to create polylines in Leapfrog Geo:
l Create a new polyline using the Polylines folder. These polylines are stored in the Polylines
folder.
l Create a new polyline as part of working with another tool. For example, a polyline can be
drawn to create a lateral extent in a geological model. These polylines are stored in the tool
used to create them and cannot be used elsewhere in the project unless they have been
shared. To share a polyline, right-click on it and select Share. The polyline will be moved to
the Polylines folder and can be used elsewhere in the project.
l Create a new polyline from a GIS line. To do this, right-click on the GIS lines object ( or )
in the GIS Data, Maps and Photos folder and select Extract Polyline. The new polyline
object will appear in the Polylines folder. It is not linked to the original GIS lines object.
See Drawing in the Scene for information on drawing and editing polylines.

Displaying Polylines
When polylines are displayed in the scene, you can control the colour of the positive and
negative surfaces of the line and of the line itself. In this example, the positive side of the polyline
is red, the negative side is blue and the polyline itself is green:

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For contact surfaces, the colour of the positive and negative sides of a ribbon will be
determined by the lithologies or categories assigned to either side of the surface.

With the Node size and Point size controls in the properties panel, you can change the size of
nodes and points in the scene to make working with the polyline easier.
Polylines have a Surface ribbon( ) and Normal ribbon( ) to help you to determine the
orientation of the polyline in the scene. The surface ribbon reflects the orientation of the
polyline and the normal ribbon is perpendicular to the surface ribbon. For example, click on the
Surface ribbon button ( ) to determine which side of the polyline is positive (red) and which
side is negative (blue):

If you are having trouble seeing the ribbons, you can change their size using the Ribbon width
control in the properties panel.
Other aspects of polyline display are useful when creating and editing polylines. See Drawing in
the Scene.

Sharing and Unsharing Polylines

Some polylines are created as part of working with other objects and are not available
elsewhere in the project. An example of this is a polyline drawn as part of creating a model
boundary. To share the polyline, right-click on the object in the project tree and click Share.
The shared polyline will be copied to the relevant location in the project tree and a hyperlink
added to the object it was shared from.

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Polylines that have been shared can be unshared by making a local copy of the polyline. To do
this, right-click on the shared polyline and select Create Local Copy:

The polyline in the Polylines folder remains, but a local copy of it is made and the hyperlink to
the Polylines folder copy is deleted. This means you can now work on, for example, the
Polylines folder copy without changes to it affecting the geological model’s copy.

Importing Polylines
Polyline formats Leapfrog Geo supports include:
l Datamine Polylines (*.asc)
l Surpac String Polylines (*.str)
l Gemcom Polylines (*.asc)
l Micromine Polylines (*.str, *.asc)
l MineSight Polylines (*.srg)
l Gocad Polylines (*.pl, *.ts)
l Drawing Interchange Polylines (*.dxf)
l Old Leapfrog Polylines (*.lfpl)
l Leapfrog Polylines (*.csv, *.txt)
l AutoCAD Drawing Files (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
l Bentley Drawing Files (v8) (*.dgn)
There are two ways to import a polyline:
l Right-click on the Polylines folder and select Import Polyline. In the Import Polyline
window, navigate to the location where the polyline file is saved and select it. Click Open.
l Drag and drop polyline files directly into Leapfrog Geo.

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If the polyline file is in Leapfrog, Gocad or DXF formats, the importing will start immediately. For
all other formats, the Polyline Import window will appear. If the polyline file is in one of the
standard formats listed above, the default settings can be used. Click Import to finish the
process. If, however, you wish to specify polyline import parameters, two pieces of information
are required:
l The columns the polyline vertex coordinates are in
l How the polyline sections are separated in the file
Select the vertex coordinate columns by clicking on the heading at the top of a column and
selecting one of East (X), North (Y) or Elev (Z) from the list.
When importing a file that has multiple features, you will be prompted to select which ones to
import. You can also choose to:
l Import the features as separate objects. Each feature will appear in the project tree as a
separate object.
l Flatten all features into one object. Leapfrog Geo will treat all features as a single object.
The polyline will be imported and added to the project tree under the Polylines folder.
See Drawing in the Scene for information on drawing and editing polylines.

Reloading Polylines
Reloading data is necessary when the imported data is modified externally. To reload a polyline,
right-click on it in the project tree and select Reload Data.

Reloading a polyline overwrites any changes you have made to the polyline. Any dependent
objects will be updated, which can take some time.

Select the file to be reloaded and click Open. The polyline will be updated, as will any
dependent objects.

Exporting Polylines
Export a polyline by right-clicking on it and selecting Export. Leapfrog Geo exports polylines in
the following formats:
l Leapfrog Polylines (*.lfpl)
l Leapfrog Polylines (*.csv)
l Drawing Interchange Polylines (*.dxf)
l Surpac String Polylines (*.str)
l Gocad Polylines (*.pl, *.ts)
l MineSight Polylines (*.srg)
l Datamine Polylines (*.asc)

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l Micromine Polylines (*.str, *.asc)

l Drawing File (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
l Bentley Drawing Files (v8) (*.dgn)

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Geochemical Data
The Geochemistry folder and related features are only available with the Geochemistry
extension. Contact Customer Support as described in Getting Support for more information
about this extension.

With the Geochemistry folder, you can establish a live link to ioGAS and visualise geochemical
data in real time. You can also transfer data between Leapfrog Geo and ioGAS, including data
to which query filters have been applied.
This topic describes how to connect to ioGAS and transfer data between ioGAS and Leapfrog
Geo. It is divided into:
l Sending Data to ioGAS
l Importing ioGAS Data
To connect to ioGAS, make sure ioGAS is running. Next, right-click on the ioGAS object in the
project tree and select Connect:

Once the connection is established, any dataset open in ioGAS will be available from the ioGAS
object and can be displayed in the Leapfrog Geo scene window:

The status of the connection to ioGAS is indicated in Leapfrog Geo, and the data file open in
ioGAS appears in the Geochemistry folder (e.g. demo.gas).
You can view the data in Leapfrog Geo by adding the ioGAS data object to the scene. When
attributes are changed in ioGAS, the display will be updated in Leapfrog Geo. You can also:
l Send from and to data columns across the ioGAS link, analyse the data in ioGAS and import
calculated columns as interval tables. This data can then be used for modelling in Leapfrog
Geo. See Sending Data to ioGAS.
l Import ioGAS data into Leapfrog Geo as points or intervals. See Importing ioGAS Data.

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To terminate the connection to ioGAS, right-click on the ioGAS object and select Disconnect:

Once the connection to ioGAS is terminated, ioGAS data (*.gas) will no longer be available in
Leapfrog Geo.

Sending Data to ioGAS

ioGAS version 6.1 and later recognise holeid, From and To columns sent from Leapfrog Geo.
Earlier versions of ioGAS can only import point data.

To send data to ioGAS, you must first create a data object from the drillhole data in the project.
This process uses data from a single interval table to create a new ioGAS object that can then be
opened in ioGAS.

Note that interpretation tables cannot be used to send data to ioGAS. If you wish to send an
interpretation table to ioGAS, export it from Leapfrog Geo and then import it back into the
project.

There are two considerations when creating an ioGAS data object:

l Are all data columns you wish to send over the ioGAS link in the same table? Creating an
ioGAS data object uses a single interval table. If the data you wish to send is in different
tables, create a merged table.
l Are lithology intervals similar in length to assay data intervals or are there significant
differences? The solution is to apply a majority composite to the lithology data using the
interval lengths from the assay table and then create a merged table containing all the data
columns you wish to send over the link.
See Merged Drillhole Data Tables and Majority Composites for more information.
To create a new ioGAS data object, right-click on the ioGAS object and select New ioGAS Data:

You can filter the data you send to ioGAS using any of the query filters defined in the project.
Make sure the query filter you wish to use has been defined before you start creating a new
data column.

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In the window that appears, select the table you wish to use for the Base table, then select the
columns to send to ioGAS. If you wish to filter the data, select the query filter required from the
list.

Enter a Name for the data column and click OK. The new data column will appear as part of the
ioGAS folder:

Note that any filter applied to the data is part of the new data object and will be sent to ioGAS
over the link.
The next step is to open the data in ioGAS.

Opening the Data in ioGAS

Ensure that Leapfrog Geo is connected to ioGAS.

Make sure no tasks are being processed in Leapfrog Geo before opening the link from ioGAS.
An error may result in ioGAS if Leapfrog Geo is processing tasks.

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In ioGAS, select File > Open Link Data. Once the column has been opened, you can use the
tools available in ioGAS to analyse the data. That the data is open in ioGAS is indicated in the
project tree:

If a connection cannot be made between Leapfrog Geo and ioGAS, it could be that the
Timeout setting in ioGAS is too low. To change this, navigate to the folder
C:\Users\....\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS\userConfig. Open the file link.ini in a text editor and
set the Timeout parameter to a higher value. The Timeout is in milliseconds.

If you have the data visible in the Leapfrog Geo scene, changes made will be displayed in
Leapfrog Geo. Here the ioGAS attribute manager has been used to assign colours to the
selected values in ten equal ranges:

The changes to attributes are automatically updated in the Leapfrog Geo scene window as
long as the link is live.

Sending a New Data Column Back to Leapfrog Geo

To save the changes and send a new data column back to Leapfrog Geo while the ioGAS link is
live, select one of the Make Variable From options from the Data menu in ioGAS.

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In Leapfrog Geo, the column will be added to the base interval table used to create the new
lithology. Here, a column called MRV_Au ( ) has been added to the base table:

When the connection to ioGAS is terminated, the ioGAS data column will remain in the
project tree as part of the ioGAS folder. Data columns created in ioGAS will also be available
and will appear in the base interval table.

Importing ioGAS Data

When Leapfrog Geo is connected to ioGAS and a dataset is open, you can import the ioGAS
data into Leapfrog Geo. There are two options:
l Importing ioGAS Data as Points
l Importing ioGAS Data as Intervals
When data is imported as points, it is added to the Points folder. When imported as intervals,
data is added to an existing interval table or used to create a new interval table. Whichever
method is selected, if the data is changed in ioGAS, it will need to be reimported.
ioGAS version 6.1 and later can send a “Filter” attribute to Leapfrog Geo. If you wish to import
this attribute, set it to a category column. This imported column will appear in Leapfrog Geo as
a query filter:

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Importing ioGAS Data as Points

To import ioGAS data as points, right-click on the ioGAS data object in the project tree and
select Import as Points:

In the window that appears, select the data columns you wish to import and how they will be
imported. Click Finish to import the data, which will appear in the Points folder. You can then
display the points in the scene and work with them as you would any other points object. The
new points object will remain in Leapfrog Geo once the connection to ioGAS is terminated.

Importing ioGAS Data as Intervals

To import ioGAS data as intervals, right-click on the ioGAS data object in the project tree and
select Import as Interval Values. Select the table to which the imported column will be added
or select the option to create a new table. Click Import.
l For a new table, select the columns you wish to import and enter a name for the table. Click
Finish. The new table will be added to the Drillholes object.
l For adding the data to an existing table, the process is similar to that for adding a column.
Select the columns to import, then click Finish.

Open Mining Format (OMF) Export and Import

Open Mining Format is a convenient format for exchanging data with other applications
because multiple geosciences objects can be moved as a single file. Leapfrog Geo supports the
export and import of Open Mining Format v0.9.
OMF export and import are available from the Leapfrog Geo menu:

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OMF Export
To export surfaces from a project in OMF format, click on the Leapfrog Geo menu and select
OMF > Export. A list of objects in the project will be displayed:

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Select the objects you wish to export, then specify the file name and the folder where it will be
saved. Click OK to export the file.
Exporting the file may take some time if you have selected a large number of objects.

OMF Import
To import data from an OMF file, click on the Leapfrog Geo menu and select OMF > Import. In
the window that appears, select the file you wish to import and click Open. The objects in the
file will be displayed:

Select the objects you wish to import and click OK. Selected objects will be imported and added
to the project tree. GIS data will be added to the GIS Data, Maps and Photos folder and points,
meshes and block models will be added to their respective folders.

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Analysing Data
Leapfrog Geo has a number of tools that help you to analyse your data.
l The most basic information about an object is contained in the object’s Properties window,
which is specific to the type of object. Right-click on the object in the project tree and select
Properties. See Object Properties in the The Project Tree topic for more information.
l Viewing statistical information about objects helps you to analyse your data. This is described
further below.
l Visualising data using the shape list and the shape properties panel is an important part of
interpreting and refining data and making modelling decisions. The tools available depend
on the type of object being displayed, and many objects can be displayed evaluated on other
objects.
l Stereonets are useful for visualising structural data and identifying trends in 2D. Errors in
categorisation of structural data can also become apparent when the data is viewed on a
stereonet.
l Form interpolants are useful for visualising structural data and identifying broad trends in 3D.
The form interpolant’s meshes can then be used to control other surfaces in the project.
l With the drillhole correlation tool, you can view and compare selected drillholes in a 2D
view. You can then create interpretation tables in which you can assign and adjust intervals
and create new intervals. Interpretation tables are like any other interval table in a project
and can be used to create models.
l You can plan drillholes, view prognoses for models in the project and export planned
drillholes in .csv format. Leapfrog Geo can also import planned drillholes.
The rest of this topic describes the different statistics visualisations available in Leapfrog Geo.

Statistics
The statistics options available in Leapfrog Geo depend on the type of object. Common
statistics visualisations are described below:
l Table of Statistics
l Scatter Plots
l Q-Q Plots
l Box Plots
l Univariate Graphs
Variations of these are described relative to the data objects for which they are relevant.

Leapfrog Geo uses fixed 25%/75% quartiles.

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Table of Statistics
For many data tables, you can view a table of statistics for multiple attributes. If the table has
one or more category columns, data can, optionally, be grouped by category. To open a table
of statistics, right-click on a data table then select Statistics. In the window that appears, select
the Table of Statistics option.
In this example, we have the initial table of statistics for a merged table that has two category
columns and four numeric columns, plus an Interval Length column. However, nothing is
displayed in the table because data columns have not yet been selected.

Select from the Numeric items available for the table. In this case, all columns have been
selected, including the Interval Length column:

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Click the Add button to select from the category columns available in the table. An entry will be
added to the Categories list. Click on the arrow to select from the available category columns:

Statistics for the selected category column will be displayed in the table. You can change what
categories are displayed by clicking on the second button and enabling or disabling categories:

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If there is more than one category column, you can set lower levels. Here there are two
category columns displayed in the table, “ROCK” and “Domain”:

You can hide empty categories (those with a count of zero) and inactive rows using the options
below the Categories list:

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Group by category and Group by numeric item provide further options for the table
organisation. Here the Group by numeric item option has been selected:

You can filter the data using any Query filter defined for the data table. Statistics for interval
tables can be unweighted or weighted by interval length.
Change the columns displayed in the table by clicking on the Edit Columns button:

Once you have set up a table of statistics on a particular table, its settings will be saved so you
can easily review the statistics and export the table using the same settings.

To export the table in CSV format, click on the Export button in the toolbar ( ).
Other controls in this window are as follows:
l The arrow buttons at the top of the window ( and ) allow you to quickly expand or
collapse the rows.

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l Click rows to select them.

l Select multiple rows by holding down the Shift or Ctrl key while clicking rows.
l The Copy button ( ) copies the selected rows to the clipboard so you can paste them into
another application.

Scatter Plots
Scatter plots are useful for understanding relationships between two variables. An additional
variable can be introduced by setting the Colouring option to a data column. The example
below plots the two variables lead and zinc against each other, with gold being indicated by the
colouring. You can make either axis a log scale with the Log scale in X and Log scale in Y
options. A Query filter may be applied also.
The appearance of the chart can be modified by adjusting the Point size, Point shape, and
White background settings.
Enable Show X = Y line to aid in assessing how far off equal the distributions are.
When you select Show linear regression, a regression line is added to the chart and a function
equation is added below the chart title.
Show conditional expectation plots a line that attempts to find the expected value of one
variable given the other. The X axis is divided into a number of bins specified by Bin count, and
the data in each bin is used to predict the expected Y value.

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By default, the limits of the chart are automatically set to range between zero and the upper
limit of the variable data. You can adjust this by turning off Automatic X axis limits and/or
Automatic Y axis limits and specifying preferred minimum and maximum values for each axis.
Select points in the scatter plot by clicking and dragging your mouse pointer to draw freehand
around the points.

Selected points can be filtered in the scene by selecting the scatter plot from the Query filter
options in the shape properties panel.

The Add button ( ) and the Remove button ( ) determine whether selected points are being
added to or removed from the selection. For example, if you draw a polygon around a set of
points with the Add button enabled, the points will be added to the selection.

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You can also:

l Remove points from a selection while the Add button ( ) is enabled by holding down the
Ctrl key and selecting points.
l Select all visible points by clicking on the Select All button ( ) or by pressing Ctrl+A.
l Clear all selected points by clicking on the Clear Selection button ( ) or by pressing
Ctrl+Shift+A.
l Swap the selected points for the unselected points by clicking on the Invert Selection
button ( ) or by pressing Ctrl+I.

Q-Q Plots
Quantile-Quantile plots are useful for validating your assumptions about the nature of
distributions of data. Select the data columns to show on the X Axis and Y Axis (which can
optionally be set as log scales). You can also select an X filter and/or Y filter to limit the values
used from the data columns.
Enable Show X = Y line to plot the mirror line for the chart, which may not always be obvious
when the X and Y axis have different scales.
Show quartile line draws a line through two points on the chart, the lower quartiles and the
upper quartiles for each of the axes.

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Box Plots
The box plot (or box-and-whisker plot) provides a visualisation of the key statistics for a data set
in one diagram.
Select a Numeric column to display, enabling Log scale if it helps to visualise the data more
clearly. If the table includes category data, set the Category column to one of the category
columns to help visualise the data. Select which categories to include from the Categories list.
You can also use a pre-defined Query filter to limit the data included in the chart.
Note these features of the plot:
l The mean is indicated by the red diamond.
l The median is indicated by the line that crosses the inside of the box.
l The box encloses the interquartile range around the median.
l The whiskers extend out to lines that mark the extents you select, which can be the
Minimum/Maximum, the Outer fence or the Inner fence. Outer and inner values are
defined as being three times the interquartile range and 1.5 times the interquartile range
respectively.

Note that a reminder of the reference for the Outer fence and Inner fence can be found by
holding your mouse cursor over these fields to see the tooltip.

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Univariate Graphs

There are several different visualisation options. Histogram shows a probability density function
for the values, and Cumulative Histogram shows a cumulative distribution function for the
values as a line graph:

There are three options that show the charts with a log scale in the X-axis:
l Select Histogram and enable Histogram of the log to see the value distribution with a log
scale X-axis.

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l Select Cumulative Histogram and enable Histogram of the log to see a cumulative
distribution function for the values with a log scale X-axis.
l Log Probability is a log-log weighted cumulative probability distribution line chart.

Percentage is used to change the Y-axis scale from a length-weighted scale to a percentage
scale.
Bin width changes the size of the histogram bins used in the plot.
The Box Plot options control the appearance of the box plot drawn under the primary chart.
The whiskers extend out to lines that mark the extents you select, which can be the
Minimum/maximum, the Inner fence or the Outer fence. Inner and outer values are defined as
being 1.5 times the interquartile range and 3 times the interquartile range respectively.
Some univariate graphs may include a Filtering option containing where a Query filter defined
for the data set can be selected.
The Limits fields control the ranges for the X-axis and Y-axis. Select Automatic X axis limits
and/or Automatic Y axis limits to get the full range required for the chart display. Untick these
and manually adjust the X limits and/or Y limits to constrain the chart to a particular region of
interest. This can effectively be used to zoom the chart.
The bottom left corner of the chart displays a table with a comprehensive set of statistical
measures for the data set.

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Drillhole Correlation Tool
With the drillhole correlation tool, you can view and compare selected drillholes in a 2D view.
You can then create interpretation tables in which you can assign and adjust intervals and
create new intervals. Interpretation tables are like any other interval table in a project and can be
used to create models. You can also save and export correlation set layouts and styles that can
be exported and used in other Leapfrog Geo projects.
This topic describes creating correlation sets and creating interpretation tables. It is divided into:
l Selecting Collars
l The Correlation Set Window
l Correlation Column Layouts
l Managing Styles
l Interpretation Tables

Selecting Collars
To select collars, you need to create a drillhole correlation set, which you can do from the
scene. First, add the collars you wish to work with to the scene. A useful way of limiting the
number of collars displayed is to draw a slice in the scene and set it to a thick slice ( ) and set the
slice width to hide collars on either side of the slice.
Next, right-click on the Drillhole Correlation folder and select New Drillhole Set. The new set
will be created and opened, but is empty until you select collars. Click the Select Collars button (
) to switch to the scene and begin selecting collars:

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The line in the scene indicates the order in which collars will appear in the set.
l To select collars one-by-one, click on the Select collar button ( ), then on the Add collar
button ( ). Click on a collar to add it to the nearest end of the set. Hold down the Ctrl key
while clicking to remove a collar from the set.
l To temporarily switch to the Select button ( ), hold down the Shift key while clicking.
l To select all collars visible in the scene, click on the Select all collars button ( ). This will
select collars using the best fit line.
l To remove a collar from the selection, click on the Remove collar button ( ), then click on
the collar you wish to remove from the set.
l To clear the selection, click on the Clear collar selection button ( ).
If you want to change the order, you can easily do so in the set tab once you have selected
collars.
Once you have selected the required collars, click the Save button ( ). The selected collars will
be added to the set window:

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The Correlation Set Window

Remove collars from the correlation set by either editing the set in the scene, as described in
Selecting Collars above, or right-click on a column and select Remove collar:

You can change how data is displayed by clicking on the column header, then selecting
Format:

The options available depend on the type of column being formatted.

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Click on drillholes and drag them in the correlation set window to change the order in which
they appear:

Add columns to the set by dragging them from the project tree into the set window. Here, four
columns have been added to the set. From right to left they are a lithology column, an assay
data column, a points data column formatted as a line and a points data column formatted as
points:

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You can then format the columns to get a better view of relationships between them. Format
columns by right-clicking on their headers and selecting Format:

The styles used to display columns can be used by other sets in the project and can be exported
to other projects. See Managing Styles below.
You can also drag some types of columns on top of other columns, although it is not possible to
display category data on top of other category data. You can select multiple columns using the
Shift and Ctrl keys.

Navigating in the Correlation Set Window

Navigate in the correlation set window using the following mouse and keyboard combinations:
l Use the scroll wheel to move up and down.
l Hold down the Shift key while scrolling to move right and left.
l Hold down the Ctrl key while scrolling to zoom in and out.
l Hold down the Alt key while scrolling to stretch the data vertically.

Correlation Column Layouts

Once you have organised data columns and how they are displayed, you can save this
information as a column layout that can be applied to other correlation sets. To do this, click the
Layout button in the toolbar and select Save Current Layout from the list:

You will be prompted for a name. Click OK to save the layout, which can then be applied to
other correlation sets by selecting the layout from the list.

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To view the layouts available in the project, right-click on the Drillhole Correlation folder in the
project tree and select Layout Manager. In the window that appears, you can easily see what
columns are used for each layout and apply a layout to all correlation sets in a project:

You can also export column layouts for use in other projects and import layouts from other
projects. Clicking Export all exports layouts as a text file.

Managing Styles
The styles used to display data columns can also be exported to other projects. To view the
styles used in the project, right-click on the Drillhole Correlation folder in the project tree and
select Style Manager:

Click Edit to change a style, which will update objects that use the selected style throughout
the project.
Click Export all to export the styles in the project as a text file that can be imported into other
projects.

Interpretation Tables
With interpretation tables, you can assign and adjust intervals and create new intervals.
Interpretation tables are like any other interval table in a project and can be used to create
models.

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To create an interpretation table, click the New Interpretation button in the correlation set
window. The New Interpretation Table window will be displayed:

There are three options for creating an interpretation table:

l Create the table without using a base table. Each drillhole will have an empty legend and a
single empty interval from 0 to its maximum depth. Select <None> for the Source Column.
l Create the table from a base column but have no intervals. This copies the base column’s
legend but no intervals. Select the Source Column, then select Empty Table.
l Create a copy of a table. Select the Source Column, then select All Intervals.
Click OK to create the table. A new interpretation table will be added to the project tree under
the Drillholes object and the column will be added to the correlation set window:

Assigning Lithologies
If you have created the interpretation table without using a base table, you will need to assign
lithologies to the new table. Do this as part of working with the table in the correlation set
window, which is described below.

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Modifying the Interpretation Table

In the correlation set window, the blue line is used to create intervals. Position the blue line then
right-click on it and select one of the options:

l The Copy from option assigns intervals from the base table.
l The Insert interval option adds an empty interval that overrides any intervals already
defined.
l The Unassign interval option clears the lithology assigned to the interval.
l The Assign interval option opens the legend for the interpretation table so you can select a
lithology to assign to the interval. If you need to add lithologies, you can do so in this
window.
For example, to create an interval at the top of the table called “High Density”, move the blue
line near to where you wish to create the interval. You do not need to be precise as you can
adjust the interval once you have added it. Right-click and select Insert interval:

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In the legend window, click the Add button and add a lithology called “High Density”:

Click OK, then select the new lithology to close the legend window. The new lithology has
been assigned to the interval:

To resize the interval, click and drag the interval end points:

You can move the interval end point and snap it to a data point in another column. To do this:
1. Click on the interval end point and drag it into position without releasing the mouse button.
2. Move the mouse across to the data point you wish to snap to.
3. Release the mouse.
You can also snap to points along the depth axis.

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Continue making changes to the interpretation table, using the Undo button to step backwards
if necessary. Save changes to update the table.

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Stereonets
Stereonets are useful for visualising structural data and identifying trends in 2D. Errors in
categorisation of structural data can also become apparent when the data is viewed on a
stereonet.
There are two types of stereonets available in Leapfrog Geo: equatorial stereonets and polar
stereonets. The process of creating a stereonet is the same for both types; you can change the
type of stereonet by clicking the Options button in the stereonet window. Both Fisher and
Bingham statistics are available for stereonets.
This topic describes how to work with stereonets in Leapfrog Geo. It covers:
l Creating a Stereonet
l Displaying the Stereonet in the 3D Scene
l Plot Options
l Data Display Options
l Viewing Stereonet Statistics
l Selecting Data in the Stereonet
l Using the Scene Window with the Stereonet
l Exporting a Stereonet

Creating a Stereonet
Create a stereonet by right-clicking on the Stereonets folder (in the Structural Modelling
folder) and selecting New Stereonet. The stereonet is created and opened in a new tab. Click
the Add button to add any structural data table in the project to the stereonet:

You can also drag and drop structural data objects from the project tree into the stereonet.

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See Plot Options and Data Display Options below for information on the different options
available for stereonets.

Displaying the Stereonet in the 3D Scene

You can display the stereonet in the 3D scene by dragging the stereonet from the project tree
into the scene or by clicking on the View button ( ) in the stereonet window:

You can display planes and poles in the 3D scene, but not contours. In the shape list, you can
control whether planes or poles are displayed in the scene:

Otherwise, the appearance of the stereonet in the 3D scene is controlled from the stereonet
window.
In the scene, you can:
l Resize the stereonet in the scene. Click on it and use the green arrows to resize it.
l Move the stereonet around in the scene. The controls are the same as those for the moving
plane.
l Centre the stereonet on its input data. To do this, click on the stereonet in the shape list and
then select from its inputs in the Move to list.

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Plot Options
Click Options to change plot options:

There are two types of stereonets available, Equatorial and Polar. You can also choose
between Equal area (Schmidt) and Equal angle (Wulff) projections.
The Desample rate affects how quickly data is displayed by combining points with duplicate
orientations, as determined by the Desample rate value. A low value will filter fewer data points,
whereas a higher value will filter out more data. Setting the Desample rate to 0 plots all points,
which may be slow for very large data sets that have not been declustered. The Desample rate
applies only to how data is displayed; it does not affect the data in the table.
Note that the settings in Edit plot options window only apply to the current stereonet. If you
want to create a stereonet “template” for your project, you can create a new stereonet with
different plot options and make copies of it in the project tree:

Data Display Options

Planar structural data can be displayed as planes ( ), poles ( ) or contours ( ), using the
colouring from any column in the structural data table. Lineations can be displayed as poles ( )
or contours ( ). Contour methods available are Schmidt, Exponential Kamb and Kamb, and
contours can be displayed filled or outlined.

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Click on a line or pole to view information about the data point:

The information displayed includes whether or not there are duplicates of the selected data
point in the data set.

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Click the mean button ( ) to view the Fisher mean on the stereonet, which is displayed as a line
for planar structural data and as an X for lineations. You can also display the Bingham best-fit
plane ( ) and eigenvectors e1, e2 and e3:

For planar structural data, you can also display the Bingham mean plane ( ):

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A legend can be displayed for the stereonet as a whole ( ) and for the contours ( ). The
stereonet’s legend is generated from the categories that are visible in the list of colourings. Here,
the categories displayed are from the Bedding column:

You can apply query filters from those available in the project.
Declustered data can be viewed on stereonets in two ways:
l Declustered data can be viewed directly on the stereonet. Simply drag the declustered table
into the stereonet.
l If the declustered data’s parent data table is displayed on the stereonet, the declustered data
is available as a filter.
For example, here a structural data table is displayed on a stereonet along with a declustered
table. The declustered table is available as a query filter for its parent object:

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Viewing Stereonet Statistics

To view statistics on the data displayed on the stereonet, click either the Bingham button or the
Fisher button:

You can select specific rows and copy them to the clipboard or copy all data to the clipboard.

Selecting Data in the Stereonet

You can select data in the stereonet and assign it to new categories or existing ones. To do this,
click on the data table in the stereonet window and select New selection from the colouring
list:

The New Category Selection window will appear:

The poles will be displayed in the stereonet, if they are not already visible, and the data table will
also be added to the scene window, together with tools for selecting points in the scene.

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Organising the stereonet tab and the Scene View tab so they are displayed side-by-side can
be useful in working with the data as you can select data in the stereonet or in the scene
window. This is described further in Using the Scene Window with the Stereonet below.

If you select an existing column as the Source Column, you can assign selected points to the
existing categories or create new categories. If you select <None> for the Source Column, you
will have to define each category manually.
When you click OK, a set of tools for selecting data will be added to the stereonet window:

There are two tools for selecting data in the stereonet, the polygon tool ( ) and the bullseye ( )
tool.
l Use the polygon tool ( ) to draw around the points you wish to select. Closing the polygon
will select the points, and you can click on the vertices to refine the shape of the selection.
Click outside of the selection to clear the polygon.
l Use the bullseye tool ( ) to:
l Click on points one-by-one.
l Click and drag around points.

The Add button ( ) and the Remove button ( ) determine whether selected points are being
added to or removed from the selection. For example, if you draw a polygon around a set of
points with the Add button enabled, the points will be added to the selection.
You can also:
l Remove points from a selection while the Add button ( ) is enabled by holding down the
Ctrl key and selecting points.
l Select all visible points by clicking on the Select All button ( ) or by pressing Ctrl+A.
l Clear all selected points by clicking on the Clear Selection button ( ) or by pressing
Ctrl+Shift+A.

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l Swap the selected points for the unselected points by clicking on the Invert Selection
button ( ) or by pressing Ctrl+I.
l Show or hide all unassigned points using the Unspecified Measurements button ( ).
Statistics are shown for the currently selected set of points:

You can choose what type of statistics to display for selected points:

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Once you have selected a set of points, click the Assign to button in the stereonet window,
then select Create New Category. In the window that appears, enter a name for the category
and assign a colour:

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Click OK. The new category will be created and the stereonet will be updated to reflect the
changes:

The scene window will also be updated.

Once you have created a new category, you can add to it by selecting further points, then
selecting the category from the Assign to list.
When you are finished, click the Save button ( ) and close the category editor. You can make
further edits by clicking the Edit button ( ) in the stereonet window.

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Using the Scene Window with the Stereonet

You can also select points in the scene window by clicking on the Select points tool ( ), then
drawing over those points in the scene:

Controls for assigning points to categories will remain in the stereonet window, and both the
stereonet window and the scene window will be updated to reflect the selected and assigned
points.

Exporting a Stereonet
Stereonets can be exported in the following formats:
l PDF Files (*.pdf)
l Scalable Vector Graphics Files (*.svg)
l PNG Image Files (*.png)
Click the Export button. Select a format and navigate to the folder where you wish to save the
file. Enter a name and click Save.

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Form Interpolants
A form interpolant is an RBF interpolant that uses planar structural data to control the RBF
gradient. The RBF gradient resembles the geology orientation, which makes form interpolants
useful for visualising structural data and identifying broad trends in 3D. The form interpolant’s
meshes can then be used to control other surfaces in the project.
This topic describes how to work with form interpolants in Leapfrog Geo. It covers:
l Creating a Form Interpolant
l The Form Interpolant in the Project Tree
l Form Interpolant Statistics
Once a form interpolant has been created, experiment with different Distance values. To do
this, double-click on the interpolant in the project tree and click on the Outputs tab.

Creating a Form Interpolant

To create a form interpolant, right-click on the Form Interpolants folder (in the Structural
Modelling folder) and select New Form Interpolant. In the window that appears, click the Add
button to add structural data tables to the interpolant:

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Data can be filtered using the query filters defined for the selected structural data tables:

Once you have created the interpolant, you can easily add and remove structural data tables
and change the filtering.

When generating the form interpolant, you can use the tangents and polarity or only the
tangents. To use both, leave the Use Polarity box ticked. To use only the tangents, untick the
box.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data is handled when it lies outside the
interpolant’s boundary:
l Boundary filter enabled. The interpolant is only influenced by the data that falls inside the
boundary.
l Boundary filter disabled. The interpolant is influenced by the data both inside and outside
the boundary.

Setting a Trend
In the Trend tab, you can set a trend using the moving plane or by entering the required values.
You can also use the Set to list to choose different options used in the project. Isotropic is the
default option used when the function is created.
The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.
l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line
on the moving plane.
l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.

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Adding Isosurfaces
The isosurfaces generated for the form interpolant are determined by the settings in the
Outputs tab. If you wish to add more isosurfaces to the interpolant, click the Add button and
enter the required Iso Value. Click on an isosurface and then on the Remove button to delete it.
The Default resolution setting is used for all new isosurfaces.

The Form Interpolant in the Project Tree

In the project tree, the form interpolant contains objects that represent different parts of the
interpolant:

l The Extents object represents the interpolant’s boundary settings, from the Boundary tab.
l The Trend object describes the trend applied in the interpolant. See Global Trends for more
information.
l The structural data object ( ) contains a link to the data used in generating the interpolant.
See Form Interpolant Statistics for more information.
l The Isosurfaces folder contains the isosurfaces defined in the Outputs tab.
To display the form interpolant:
l Drag the interpolant into the scene.
l Right-click on the interpolant and select View Isosurfaces.

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Form Interpolant Statistics

To view information about the data used for the form interpolant, right-click on the structural
data object ( ) under the interpolant and select Properties. The General tab includes
information about how the data has been declustered:

You cannot change how data is declustered in the form interpolant, but if you wish to have
more control over this, create a declustered structural data set and use it as the input for the
form interpolant. See Declustering Planar Structural Data for more information.

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Planning Drillholes
In Leapfrog Geo, planned drillholes are organised into drillhole groups. You can evaluate
models onto the drillhole group and view drilling prognoses for all drillholes in the group.

Planned drillhole groups were introduced in Leapfrog Geo 4.3. When a project from an
earlier version is opened in Leapfrog Geo 4.3, all existing planned drillholes will automatically
be assigned to groups, based on the phases of each drillhole.
If necessary, you can move planned drillholes between groups by opening both groups,
then dragging drillholes between the groups. This copies drillholes from group to group, so
once copied, you will need to delete the planned drillhole from the group it does not belong
to.

Planned drillholes are added to a project from a drillhole group, and these are stored in the
Planned Drillholes folder. When displayed in the scene, the planned drillhole is made up of a
collar point, a target location and a path defined by lift and drift parameters:

The rest of this topic is divided into:

l Adding Planned Drillholes
l Planning Options
l Drilling Prognoses
l Exporting Planned Drillholes
l Importing Planned Drillholes

Adding Planned Drillholes

To plan a drillhole, first add the data objects to the scene that you will use in helping to define
the drillhole, such as the topography and any existing drillholes. Next, right click on the Planned

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Drillholes folder and select New Group. In the window that appears, you can define basic
information about the group, including the Prefix used for each drillhole added to the group:

Start defining drillholes by clicking the Add Drillhole button.

You can change whether Collar or Target is selected when this window is opened by
clicking on the Defaults button. See Planning Options below.

A name is automatically generated for the new planned drillhole based on the Prefix defined
for the group.
There are three ways to define the drillhole collar or target:
l Click in the scene to set the collar or target location. First, click on the Select button ( ) for
the Collar or Target, then click in the scene to define the Collar or Target. The drillhole will
appear in the scene and you can adjust the coordinates using the controls in the Drillhole

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Planning window. Click the Slice along drillhole button to draw a slice in the scene. This is
useful in adjusting the drillhole path and in defining subsequent drillholes.
l Draw the drillhole in the scene. Click on the Select button ( ) for the Collar or Target, then
click and drag in the scene to define a basic path for the drillhole. If you are defining the
drillhole from the collar down, click first on or near the topography. Likewise, if you are
defining the drillhole from the target up, click first at or near the target point.
l Enter the coordinates for the Collar or the Target in the Drillhole Planning window.
Clicking the Move Collar onto the Topography button adjusts the elevation of the drillhole so
that it lies on the topography.
Click the Next Hole button to create another planned drillhole. The new planned drillhole will
be created at a specific distance from the currently displayed planned drillhole using the Path
settings for the currently displayed drillhole and the Offset To Next Hole settings in the
Drillhole Planning Options window. See Planning Options below.
Once you have specified the collar or target, adjust the drillhole path:
l Lift is how much the drillhole deviates upward.
l Drift is how much the drillhole deviates laterally.
l Leapfrog Geo automatically calculates the Depth value when the drillhole is defined by the
Target location.
l Adding an End of hole length extends the drillhole past the Target location.
Once you have finished defining planned drillholes, click OK to return to the Drillhole Group
window.

You can change the automatically generated name by clicking on the drillhole in the list and
editing the text.

Search for planned drillholes in the list by pressing Ctrl-F. A Find window will appear that
you can use to search the list.

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Click the Edit button ( ) to change the settings for a planned drillhole, or click OK to save the
group.
Any model in project can be evaluated on a drillhole group, and evaluations can be exported
when the group is exported as interval tables. See Exporting Planned Drillholes below. Right-
click on the group in the project tree and select Evaluations. The Sample Distance setting
applies to numeric evaluations and determines the spacing between downhole evaluation
points.
You can also define filters for a drillhole group. A filter makes it easier to select a subset of the
drillhole when the group is displayed in the scene. To define a filter, right-click on the group
and select New Filter. Select which drillholes to include in the filter and enter a name for it. The
filter will be saved in the project tree as part of the group.
Display planned drillhole by dragging the group into the scene. Hide drillholes in the scene
using any defined filters or by opening the group and using the show/hide button ( ).
You can copy planned drillholes between groups by opening both groups, then dragging
drillholes between the groups. For example, here the drillholes selected in the first group are
being copied into the second group:

This copies drillholes from group to group, rather than moving them, so once copied, you will
need to delete the planned drillhole from the group it does not belong to.

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Planning Options
Drillhole planning options are set on a per-project basis. To change drillhole planning options,
right-click on the Planned Drillholes folder or on a drillhole group and select Edit Planned
Drillholes Defaults. The Drillhole Planning Options window will appear:

Select whether new planned drillholes are specified by the Collar or by the Target.
The Offset To Next Hole values apply when defining multiple drillholes in the Drillhole
Planning window.
Enter the information required and click OK. The new settings will be applied to the next new
planned drillhole added to the project.

Drilling Prognoses
Planned drillholes can be evaluated against any model in the project. To view drilling prognoses
for a drillhole, right-click on a drillhole group in the project tree and select Drilling Prognoses.
The Drilling Prognoses tab will appear:

The dropdown list contains all evaluations on the drillhole group, along with a Merged
Intervals option that combines the information from all evaluations. You can copy the
information displayed to your computer’s clipboard by selecting rows, then clicking the Copy
button ( ). The information in the selected rows will be copied as tab delimited text, which can
be copied into a spreadsheet application such as Excel.

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Exporting Planned Drillholes

There are two ways to export planned drillholes: export their parameters or export interval
tables that contain the drillholes.

Export Parameters
Exporting planned drillhole parameters exports the drillholes as a *.csv file. To export
parameters for planned drillholes, right-click on a drillhole group and select Export
Parameters. In the window that appears, select the drillholes you want to export. The total
length will be updated as you add or remove drillholes.
In Leapfrog Geo, positive dip points down for planned drillholes. To invert the dip for exported
planned drillholes so that negative dip points down, tick the box for Invert dip on export.
Click Export. Navigate to where you wish to save the file, then click Save.

Export as Interval Table

To export planned drillholes as an interval table, right-click on a drillhole group and select
Export as Interval Table. Select the evaluations you wish to include, then click Export. In the
Export Planned Drillholes window, the files that will be created are listed, one each for the
collar and survey table and one for each selected evaluation. Change the Base file name, if
required, choose a folder in which to save the files, then click Export to save the files.

Importing Planned Drillholes

Leapfrog Geo imports planned drillholes from files in CSV format. The columns expected are:
l A drillhole identifier
l X-Y-Z coordinates for the planned drillhole
l Azimuth
l Dip
l Lift rate
l Drift rate
l Distance
l Extension
l Target Depth
l Comment

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When importing planned drillholes, you can import them into a new group or into an existing
group. To import planned drillholes, right-click on the Planned Drillholes folder or on a group
and select Import Planned Drillholes. If the IDs in the file are already in the project, you will be
prompted to resolve the conflict:

You can:
l Rename the imported drillholes. Leapfrog Geo will automatically assign new names and
import the planned drillholes.
l Exclude planned drillholes that already exist in the project. Planned drillholes will only be
imported if they have an identifier that does not already exist in the project.
l Replace existing planned drillholes with the imported drillholes. Use this option if you are
importing information previously exported from the project and subsequently updated in an
external application.
Click OK to process the file.
If there are no conflicts, the planned drillholes will be added to the project.

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Modelling
This section describes how to build models in Leapfrog Geo.
l Geological models can be built from lithology data or from any other suitable data in the
project. Visualising data in the scene is an important step in determining the model that will
be built, and the tools for doing this are described in Visualising Data. Once this has been
determined, the next step is to define a basic geological model and refine its boundaries.
Modelling contact surfaces and setting their cutting relationships determine how the basic
model volume is divided into lithologies. Models can also have a fault system that, once
activated, will subdivided the model into fault blocks.
l With the Numeric Models folder, you can interpolate downhole numeric data, composited
drillhole data and points data.
l Combined models use information from up to four geological models, interpolants and
distance functions in order to visualise relationships between different types of data in the
project.
l With the Hydrogeology extension, geological models created in Leapfrog Geo can be used
as the basis for MODFLOW and FEFLOW models. You can create flow models directly in
Leapfrog Geo and assign hydrological/material properties based on the lithologies in the
geological model. Flow models can be exported for use in other applications, and you can
import existing flow models and use them as the basis for the construction of new models.
Flow models can be displayed in the scene, and time-dependent data can also be visualised.
l Leapfrog Geo can import Isatis files, UBC grids and block models in CSV format. Leapfrog
Geo can import Isatis files and block models in CSV format. Block models imported in CSV
format must be regular, rotated only about the Z axis. Block models and sub-blocked
models can also be created directly in Leapfrog Geo and exported for use in other
applications. Creating block models within Leapfrog Geo has the advantage that the
resolution can easily be changed. Geological models and interpolants can be evaluated on
block models, as described in Evaluations below.

Evaluations
In Leapfrog Geo, models can be evaluated onto other objects in the project. To do this, right-
click on an object and select Evaluations:

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See Back-Flagging Drillhole Data for information on evaluating drillholes on geological

models.
See Evaluating on Sections for information on evaluating surfaces on cross sections and
fence sections.
See Evaluating Points Data for information on evaluating surfaces on points.

A window will appear listing all objects in the project that can be used for an evaluation. Once
you have selected one or more objects, click OK.
The evaluations will be added to the object in the project tree:

When you display objects in the scene, you can select the evaluations from the view list:

Assigning Attributes to Volumes

For geological models, numeric models and combined models, you can assign attributes to the
model volumes. To do this, right-click on the model in the project tree and select Volume
Attributes. In the window that appears, click the Add Attribute button to add a new column.

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Enter a name for the column and click OK. You can then edit the values in the table. When you
click in the scene, the values will be included in the information displayed about the selected
volume:

Attribute information cannot be displayed in the Central Browser.

When you save scenes for viewing in Leapfrog Viewer, manually entered attributes will be
displayed when volume information is displayed.

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Geological Models
The model building process involves several key steps:
l Creating the project and setting up the modelling environment
l Importing drillhole data and correcting errors
l Importing other required data
l Visualising the data in the scene and inspecting it to make sense of the model that will be
built. It is at this stage that you might create new drillhole data columns to select data that
will be the basis of geological models.
l Creating a basic GM, then refining its boundary and defining a fault system
l Modelling the contact surfaces
l Setting the cutting relationships between the different contact surfaces and generating
volumes
A fault system can also be defined that divides the geological model into subunits in which the
internal structure can be defined independent of the other subunits in the model. This is
described in Faulted Models.
The rest of this topic describes the process of creating a geological model. It is divided into:
l Creating a New Geological Model
l The Geological Model in the Project Tree
l Geological Model Display
l Copying a Geological Model
l Creating a Static Copy of a Geological Model
l Geological Model Volumes and Surfaces Export Options
l Extracting Model Volumes
A geological model can be created using only a basic set of parameters. The only parameter
that cannot be changed once the model has been created is the base lithology.

Creating a New Geological Model

To create a new geological model, right-click on the Geological Models folder and select New
Geological Model. The New Geological Model window will open, together with a set of
controls in the scene that help in defining the model extents.

The Base Lithology

Select the drillhole data column that will be used as the basis of a model from the Base
Lithology Column list. If you do not wish to use lithology data as the basis for the model, select
<None>. This may be the case if, for example, you want to build a model from points data or

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from an imported map. If you select <None>, you will need to manually define the lithologies
that will be modelled.

If more than one column of lithology data is available for creating models, be sure to choose
the correct one as it cannot be changed once the initial model has been created. If after
creating and modifying the model, you find you need to modify the drillhole data, resulting
in a new lithology column, you can use that new column to create contact surfaces using
Other Contacts options.

You can also filter the drillhole data used to build the geological model using query filters. To
do so, select the required query filter from the Filter data list. Once the model has been created,
you can remove the filter or select a different filter.

Surface Resolution
The surface resolution setting Leapfrog Geo automatically uses as the default is based on the
data available in the project. Set the surface resolution for the model as a whole and choose
whether or not the resolution will be adaptive. See Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo for
more information on the effects of these settings.
Later, while refining the model, you can change the resolution of each surface and enable or
disable adaptive resolution. See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model.

Model Extents
A geological model is initially created with a basic rectangular set of extents aligned with the
south/north and east/west axes. You can define the model’s extents in three ways:
l Enter the coordinates.
l Select Enclose Object and choose from the list of objects in the project. If the model is based
on drillhole data, select the lithology segments from the Enclose Object list.
l Use the controls that appear in the scene. The orange handle adjusts the centre of the plane
and the red handles adjust the size.
See Object Extents for more information.
Enter a Name for the model that describes the purpose of the model. This Name will be used in
naming the objects that will be added to the model. Click OK to create the new model. The new
geological model will be created and added to the Geological Models folder.
See Editing a Geological Model for information on how to change the basic settings for the
model.

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The Geological Model in the Project Tree

The objects under the geological model in the project tree represent different parts of the
model:

l The Boundary object defines the limits of the geological model. When the model is first
created, this is the rectangular model extents. If a topography has been defined, it is
automatically used for as the upper boundary. See Modifying a Geological Model’s
Boundary for more information about modifying the boundary.
l The Fault System object defines faults and their interactions in the model. See Faulted
Models.
l The Lithologies object describes all the lithological units to be modelled and the colours
that are used to display them on the screen. It is generated automatically from all the
lithologies identified in drillhole data selected when the model is created. If no column was
selected, you will need to define the lithologies manually before you start modelling the
lithology layers.
l The Surface Chronology object describes the contact surfaces in the model, organised in
chronological order, from youngest to oldest. These surfaces and their chronology
determine how the volume inside the model extents is divided into lithological units. When
the model is first created, the Surface Chronology is empty, but it will eventually hold all
contact surfaces and inputs to them.
l The Output Volumes folder contains all the volumes generated in building the geological
model. When the model is first created, the Surface Chronology is empty and so there is only
a single output volume in the Output Volumes folder. This volume fills the model’s extents
and is called “Unknown”. Once contact surfaces have been generated and added to the
Surface Chronology object, new volumes will be generated and added to the Output
Volumes folder.

Geological Model Display

Right-click on the geological model in the project tree to view its display options:
l The View Object option adds the geological model to the shape list as a single object. You
can also display the geological model in this way by dragging it from the project tree into the
scene. Change the visibility of the model’s volumes by clicking the Edit Colours button in the
shape list.

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l The View Output Volumes option adds the model to the scene as a series of output
volumes. It is the equivalent of dragging the Output Volumes folder into the scene. Change
the visibility of the model’s volumes individually.
l The View Surface Chronology option displays the surfaces that are used to divided up the
model.
l The View Fault Block Boundaries option is only available when a fault system has been
defined and enabled for the model. Selecting View Fault Block Boundaries displays the
fault blocks without displaying the lithology layers.

Copying a Geological Model

Creating a copy of a geological model is a useful way of experimenting with changes to a
model.
To copy a geological model, right-click on it in the project tree and select Copy. Enter a name
for the copy of the model and click OK. The copy will be added to the project tree.

Creating a Static Copy of a Geological Model

Creating a static copy preserves a snapshot of a geological model that does not change, even
when changes are made to the data on which the original model was dependent. This is a
useful way of storing historical models and comparing models. Static copies can be exported
from Leapfrog Geo, as described in Geological Model Volumes and Surfaces Export Options
below.
To create a static copy of a geological model, right-click on it in the project tree and select
Static Copy. Enter a name for the copy of the model and click OK. The copy will be added to
the Geological Models folder.
In the project tree, the static copy ( ) is made up of a Legend object ( ), the output volumes ( )
and all surfaces created in building the model.

Static models created in versions of Leapfrog Geo before 2.2 copied only the output volumes
and the legend, and the static model appeared in the shape list only as a single line. When
these static models are upgraded and displayed in the scene, the individual output volumes
will be added to the shape list.

To view the date a static copy was created, right-click on it in the project tree and select
Properties. The date the copy was created is shown in the General tab.

Geological Model Volumes and Surfaces Export Options

There are three options for exporting a geological model’s output volumes and surfaces. These
are:
l Export an output volume or a surface as a mesh. Right-click on it in the project tree and click
Export. You will be prompted for a file name and location. See Exporting a Single Mesh.

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l Export an output volume as a thickness grid. Right-click on it in the project tree and click
Export Thickness Grid. See Thickness Grids.
l Export multiple output volumes and surfaces. Right-click on the geological model in the
project tree and select Export. See Exporting Multiple Meshes from Models.
When exporting output volumes, the Merge output lithology volumes setting in the
geological model’s General tab (see Editing a Geological Model) determines how the output
volumes are handled when they are exported. If this setting is enabled, internal walls and
surface seams will be removed from volumes of the same lithology.

Extracting Model Volumes

There are number of options for extracting meshes from geological model output volumes.
These options are available by right-clicking on volumes in the Output Volumes folder and
selecting Extract Mesh. There are five options:
l Mesh Parts
l Component Surfaces
l Younger Surfaces
l Older Surfaces
l Boundary Surfaces
The Mesh Parts option is the same as the option available on meshes elsewhere in the project.
See Extracting Mesh Parts.
The Younger Surfaces, Older Surfaces and Boundary Surfaces options extract different parts
of the selected volume, which are saved into the Meshes folder. Here, the boundary surfaces
are shown in blue, the younger surfaces in yellow and the older surfaces in purple:

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Component Surfaces extracts a separate surface for each volume the selected volume interacts
with, including the boundary. The component surfaces are named after the boundary they are
derived from and saved into a subfolder in the Meshes folder. For example, here meshes have
been extracted for each contact with the Intermineral diorite volume:

Editing a Geological Model

Once a geological model has been created, you can change the model’s resolution and other
basic settings by double-clicking on the model in the project tree. The Geological Model
window will open with the General tab selected. The other tabs in the Geological Model
window represent the different parts of the geological model. It is generally more useful,
however, to work with these parts of the model on an individual basis by either double-clicking
on the object in the project tree or right-clicking and seeing what options are available.
The rest of this topic describes how to change the basic settings for a geological model. It is
divided into:
l Changing the Query Filter
l Surface Generation Options
l Volume Generation Options

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Changing the Query Filter

Although the Base lithology column cannot be changed once a geological model has been
created, you can change the filters applied to the data. Any filters defined for the lithology table
used to define the model can be applied to the Base lithology column:

Individual surfaces in the geological model can inherit the query filter from the parent
geological model or can use a different filter. To change what query filter is used for a surface,
double-click on the points used to create the surface and change the Query filter setting in the
Lithology tab:

You may first need to disable the Inherit from GM option to change the Query filter.

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Surface Generation Options

The Surface Generation options apply to the model as whole, but can be overridden for
individual surfaces.

See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model for information on changing the Surface
resolution and Adaptive settings for individual surfaces.
When Exact clipping is enabled, model surfaces will be generated without “tags” that overhang
the model boundary. This setting is enabled by default when you create geological model.
Surfaces created in building the geological model can be set to snap to the data used in the
model. There are three options:
l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.
l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to surfaces as part of the model refinement process.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data within the Maximum snap distance but not to
other data used to modify surfaces.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

If you need surfaces to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. If you want finer control over what objects are snapped to, you can do this
on a surface-by-surface basis. See:
l Surfacing Options for Deposits and Erosions
l Surfacing Options for Intrusions
l Surfacing Options for Veins
l Changing Surfacing Options for an Offset Surface
l Surfacing Options for a Structural Surface

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Volume Generation Options

The Merge output volumes setting determines whether or not output volumes of the same
lithology are merged when the volumes are exported. If Merge output volumes is set to Fast or
Robust, internal walls and surface seams will be removed from volumes of the same lithology.
Either option is suitable when you are using output volumes as extents for other models.
The difference between Fast and Robust is the algorithm used:
l Fast removes back-to-back triangles before generating output volumes. This option was
new in Leapfrog Geo version 4.0 and is the default option selected when a geological model
is created.
l Robust is the Merge output lithology volumes option from versions of Leapfrog Geo before
4.0. Robust uses the volume cutter, which tracks where the triangles originated and is,
therefore, a slow option for building output volumes.
If there are issues with surfaces exported to other modelling packages using the Do not merge
output volumes setting, try the Fast setting. If there are still issues, try the Robust setting.

When projects created in earlier versions of Leapfrog Geo are opened in Leapfrog Geo 5.0,
the Volume Generation setting for any existing geological models will not be changed.

Surface Resolution for a Geological Model

When you create a geological model (see Creating a New Geological Model), the surface
resolution is set for the model as a whole. When surfaces and boundaries are created as part of
the model-building process, their resolution is inherited from the geological model:
l For deposit and erosion contact surfaces, stratigraphic sequences and model boundaries,
the resolution is the same as the geological model.
l For intrusion contact surfaces, the resolution is half that set for the geological model.
l For vein contact surfaces, the resolution is the same as the geological model, but the
Adaptive option does not apply.
You can change the resolution and enable or disable the adaptive isosurfacer on a surface-by-
surface basis. This is useful if you want to build a detailed model of some lithologies without
increasing processing time for other volumes.

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To change the resolution settings for a contact surface, double-click on the surface in the
project tree, then click on the Surfacing tab:

For a lateral extent or fault, simply double-click on the surface in the project tree to change its
resolution settings.
Untick the Inherit resolution from GM box to change the resolution settings for a surface. This
setting may be disabled, depending on the data used to create the boundary or surface.
The resolution of intrusion contact surfaces is also affected by the point generation parameters.
See Intrusion Point Generation Parameters for more information.

Modifying a Geological Model’s Boundary

Geological models are created with a basic set of rectangular extents that can then be refined
using other data in the project. These extents usually correspond to the ground surface and
known boundaries. Creating extents can also be used to restrict modelling to a particular area
of interest; for example, modelling can be restricted to a known distance from drillholes by
applying a distance function as a lateral extent. Extents do not need to be strictly vertical
surfaces, and can be model volumes. It is also possible to define a base that serves as the
geological model’s base.

When a topography is defined for the project, it will be automatically applied as a geological
model’s upper boundary when the model is created.

The rest of this topic describes how to create and work with geological model extents. It is
divided into:
l Creating Extents for a Geological Model
l Changing an Extent’s Settings
l Adding Data to an Extent
l Editing an Extent with a Polyline
l Editing an Extent with Structural Data
l Removing an Extent from a Geological Model

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Creating Extents for a Geological Model

To create an extent, expand the geological model in the project tree. Right-click on the
Boundary object and select from the New Lateral Extent or New Base options. Follow the
prompts to create the extent, which will then appear in the project tree under the model’s
Boundary object. For example, this geological model has two lateral extents, one from a
polyline and the other from GIS data:

New extents are automatically applied to the boundary being modified. Leapfrog Geo usually
orients a new extent correctly, with red presenting the inside face of the extent and blue
representing the outside face. If this is not the case, you can change the orientation by right-
clicking on the extent in the project tree and selecting Swap Inside.

Extent From a Polyline

You can create an extent from a polyline that already exists in the project or you can draw a new
one. If you want to use an imported polyline, import it into the Polylines folder before creating
the new extent.
To create a new extent from a polyline, right-click on the model’s Boundary object and select
New Lateral Extent > From Polyline or New Base > From Polyline. In the window that
appears, select whether you will create a new polyline or use an existing one:

For lateral extents, you can create the extent as a Vertical Wall or Surface. If you create the
lateral extent as a Surface, you will be able to modify it using additional data, as described
below. A lateral extent created as a Vertical Wall, however, cannot be modified. A base is
always created as a surface and so can be modified as described below.

Click OK to generate the new extent. If you have chosen to create a New Drawing, the drawing
controls will appear in the scene and you can begin drawing, as described in Drawing in the
Scene.
The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary object.

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If the surface generated does not fit the polyline adequately, you can increase the quality of
the fit by adding more points to the polyline. See Drawing in the Scene for information on
adding points to polylines.

Extents created from polylines can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

Extent From GIS Vector Data

GIS data in the project can be used to create a lateral extent or a base for a geological model.
Once the data you wish to use has been imported into the project, right-click on the model’s
Boundary object and select New Lateral Extent > From GIS Vector Data or New Base > From
GIS Vector Data.
In the window that appears, select the data object you wish to use:

For lateral extents, you can create the extent as a Vertical Wall or Surface. If you create the
lateral extent as a Surface, you will be able to modify it using additional data, as described
below. A lateral extent created as a Vertical Wall, however, cannot be modified. A base is
always created as a surface and so can be modified as described below.

If you select the Surface option, you can use the GIS data object with its own elevation data or
projected onto the topography:

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Using the On Topography option makes sense for GIS data as it is, by nature, on the
topography. The On Topography option also mitigates any issues that may occur if elevation
information in the GIS data object conflicts with that in the project.
Click OK to create the new extent. The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the
Boundary object.
Extents created from GIS data can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

Extent From Points

To create a new extent from points data, right-click on the Boundary object for the model you
are working on and select New Lateral Extent > From Points or New Base > From Points. The
Select Points To Add window will be displayed, showing points data available in the project:

Select the information you wish to use and click OK.

The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary object.
Extents created from points can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

Extent From Structural Data

Planar structural data can be used to create a lateral extent or a base for a geological model.
You can create a new structural data table or use a table that already exists in the project. If you
want to use categories of structural data in creating the extent, use an existing table and create
filters for those categories before creating the lateral extent.

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To start, right-click on the Boundary object for the model you are working on and select New
Lateral Extent > From Structural Data or New Base > From Structural Data. The New
Structural Data window will be displayed, showing structural data available in the project:

Select the New Drawing option to draw the structural data points directly in the scene.
Select the Existing Structural Data option to use a table in the Structural Modelling folder.
With this option, you will be able to select from the categories available in the data table, if
query filters have been created for those categories:

Click OK to generate the new extent. If you have chosen to create a New Drawing, the drawing
controls will appear in the scene and you can begin drawing, as described in Creating New
Planar Structural Data Tables. To share the new structural data table, right-click on it and
select Share. The table will be saved to the Structural Modelling folder.
The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary object.
Extents created from structural data can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

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Extent From a Surface

To use a surface as an extent for a geological model, right-click on the model’s Boundary
object and select New Lateral Extent > From Surface or New Base > From Surface. The Select
Boundary window will appear, showing all the meshes that can be used as an extent:

Select the required mesh and click OK. The extent will be added to the model’s Boundary
object.
You cannot modify an extent created from a mesh by adding data, editing with polylines or
structural data or by applying a trend. However, the extent is linked to the mesh used to create
it, and updating the mesh will update the extent.

Extent From Distance to Points

Leapfrog Geo can calculate the distance to set of points and use the resulting distance buffer as
a lateral extent for a geological model. To create a new lateral extent from a distance buffer,
right-click on the Boundary object for the model you are working on and select New Lateral
Extent > From Distance To Points. The Smoothed Distance Buffer window will appear:

Select the Distance and set an Anisotropy, if required.

The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.

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l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line
on the moving plane.
l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.
You can also use the Set to list to choose different options Leapfrog Geo has generated based
on the data used to build the model. Isotropic is the default option used when the model is
created.
Click OK to create the new extent, which will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary
object.
To change the extent’s settings, expand the model’s Boundary object in the project tree and
double-click on the extent. Adjust the Distance and Anisotropy, if required.
The resolution of extents is automatically inherited from the geological model. You can change
the resolution for an extent if you want more or less detail than for the geological model as a
whole. To do so, untick the box for Inherit resolution from GM and change the setting.
Extents created from a distance to points function can be modified by adding points data and
GIS vector data. See Adding Data to an Extent.

Extent From a Distance Function

A distance function calculates the distance to a set of points and can be used to bound a
geological model. You can use an existing distance function as a lateral extent or create a new
one.
To use a distance function as a lateral extent, right-click on the Boundary object for the model
you are working on and select New Lateral Extent > From Distance Function. If there are no
distance functions in the project, you will be prompted to create a new one. See Distance
Functions for information on defining and editing the distance function.
When there are already distance functions in the project, you will be prompted to choose
between creating a new function or using an existing one:

To use an existing function, select it from the list and set a Buffer distance. Click OK to create
the lateral extent.
When you create a new distance function, it will be part of the model’s Boundary object and
will not be available elsewhere in the project. To share it within the project, expand the lateral
extent in the project tree and right-click on the distance function. Select Share. The distance
function will be saved to the Numeric Models folder.

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To change the extent’s settings, expand the model’s Boundary object in the project tree and
double-click on the extent. The Edit Distance Buffer window will appear.

The resolution of extents is automatically inherited from the geological model. You can change
the resolution for an extent if you want more or less detail than for the geological model as a
whole. To do so, untick the box for Inherit resolution from GM and change the setting.

Base From Lithology Contacts

To create a base from lithlogy contacts, right-click on the Boundary object and select either
New Base > From Base Lithology or New Base > From Other Contacts.

The only difference in the two methods is that when creating a base from other contacts,
you must first select the lithology column from those available in the project.

When defining the base, select the primary lithology and the contacts to use:

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For complex geologies, the up and down directions for the base may not be clear. If this is the
case, untick the Horizontal Plane box. A reference plane will appear in the scene, with the up-
facing surface labelled A and the downward-facing surface labelled B. Controlling the position
of the reference plane is similar to controlling the position of the moving plane:
l Use the handles in the scene window to move the plane.
l Set the Dip and Dip Azimuth values in the New Contact Points window. The reference
plane will be updated in the scene.
Once the reference plane is correctly oriented, click the Set From Plane button.
Click OK to create the base, which will appear under the Boundary object. The new base will
automatically be added to the model.

Each geological model can have only one base defined, so if you wish to define a new base,
you must first delete the existing base from the model. Do this by right-clicking on the Base
object and selecting Delete. You can also choose not to use the base you have defined. See
Removing an Extent from a Geological Model for more information.

Changing an Extent’s Settings

For geological model extents created from polylines, GIS data, points and structural data, you
can change the extent’s settings by double-clicking on it in the project tree.

In the Surfacing tab, you can change surface resolution and contact honouring options, which
are described below. In the Trend tab, you can apply a trend to the extent, which is described in
Applying a Trend.

Surface Resolution
For geological models, the resolution of extents and whether or not the adaptive isosurfacer is
used is automatically inherited from the geological model. You can change these settings for an
extent if you want more or less detail than for the geological model as a whole. To do so, untick
the box for Inherit resolution from GM and make the required changes.

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Contact Honouring
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations. For extents, the Snap to data setting in the Surfacing tab determines
whether or not the extent honours the data used to create it. Options are:
l Off. The extent does not snap to the data used to create it. This is the default setting.
l All data. The extent snaps to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the extent.
l Drilling only. The extent snaps to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance, but not to other data used to modify the extent. For
example, the extent will honour points data derived from drillhole data, but not points data
imported into the Points folder.
l Custom. The extent snaps to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab that are within the
Maximum snap distance.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

The snap setting for the geological model will be used if Snap to data is set to Inherit from GM.
Whatever the setting, you can see what objects are snapped to by clicking on the Inputs tab.
If you need the extent to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

Applying a Trend
You can adjust an extent created from polylines, GIS data, points and structural data by
applying a trend to it. To do this, add the extent to the scene. Next, double-click on the extent in
the project tree and click the Trend tab.
Often the easiest way to apply a trend is to click on the Draw plane line button ( ) and draw a
plane line in the scene in the direction in which you wish to adjust the surface. You may need to
rotate the scene to see the plane properly.
The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.
l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line

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on the moving plane.

l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.

Once you have adjusted the plane to represent the trend you wish to use, click the Set From
Plane button to copy the moving plane settings.
The Set to list contains a number of different options Leapfrog Geo has generated based on the
data used in the project. Isotropic is the default option used when the extent was created.
Settings made to other surfaces in the project will also be listed, which makes it easy to apply the
same settings to many surfaces.
Click OK to apply the changes.
See Global Trends for more information.

Adding Data to an Extent

Extents created from polylines, GIS data, points and structural data can be modified by adding
points data objects, GIS vector data and structural data. Extents created from a distance to
points function can be modified by adding points data and GIS vector data. To add data to an
extent, right-click on the extent in the project tree and select the data type you wish to use from
the Add menu.
l Points data. Select from the points data objects available in the project and click OK.
l GIS vector data. Select from the GIS vector data available in the project and click OK.
l Structural data. Select from the structural data tables available in the project. If the selected
table has query filters defined, you can apply one of these filters by selecting the required
query from the list. Click OK to add the selected data to the extent. An alternative to adding
an existing structural data table to an extent is to edit the extent with structural data. This is
described in Editing an Extent with Structural Data below.
You can also add a polyline that already exists in the project. To do this, right-click on the extent
in the project tree and select Add > Polyline. You will be prompted to choose from the polylines
in the Polylines folder.

Editing an Extent with a Polyline

You can edit an extent using a polyline, which is described in Editing Surfaces with Polylines. A
polyline used to edit an extent will be added to the project tree as part of the extent. To edit the
polyline, right-click on it and select Edit Polyline or add it to the scene and click the Edit button (
) in the shape list. If you wish to remove the polyline from the extent, right-click on it in the
project tree and select Delete or Remove.
To add an existing polyline to a geological model extent, use the Add > Polyline option.

Editing an Extent with Structural Data

You can edit an extent using structural data, which is described in Editing Surfaces with
Structural Data. A structural data table will be added to the project tree as part of the extent.
To edit the table, right-click on it and select Edit In Scene or add it to the scene and click the

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Edit button ( ) in the shape list. If you wish to remove the table from the extent, right-click on it
in the project tree and select Delete or Remove.

Removing an Extent from a Geological Model

If you have defined an extent and want to remove it from the model, there are two options. The
first is to right-click on the extent in the project tree and click Delete. This deletes the extent
from the model, but does not delete parent objects from the project unless they were created as
part of the model, e.g. a polyline used as a lateral extent but not shared within the project. Use
this option only if you are sure you do not want to use the extent.
The second method is useful if you are making changes to the extent and do not want to
recompute the model with each change. Double-click on the model’s Boundary object or
double-click on the model and click on the Boundary tab. The Boundaries part of the window
lists all objects used as extents for a geological model:

Untick the box for extents to temporarily disable them in the model. The model will be
reprocessed, but you can then work on the extent without reprocessing the model. Disabled
extents will be marked as inactive in the project tree:

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Model Lithologies
To view the lithologies used for a geological model, you can:
l Double-click on the geological model in the project tree and then click on the Lithologies
tab.
l Double-click on the Lithologies object for the geological model in the project tree.
All the lithologies defined for the geological model are displayed, together with the colours
used to display them:

Click a colour chip to change the colours used to display the lithologies.

To set multiple lithologies to a single colour, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the colour
chips you wish to change, then click on one of the colour chips. The colour changes you
make will be made to all selected lithologies.

If the geological model was created from drillhole data, the lithologies are automatically
generated from that data. There is also an additional lithology, “Unknown”, which is used to
label lithologies that cannot be labelled using known lithologies. This is the case when a
geological model is first created and no contact surfaces have been defined. The entire model
volume has no identified lithologies and so is assigned as “Unknown”.
An alternative to setting unidentified lithologies to “Unknown” is to select one of the defined
lithologies as the “background lithology”. To do this, double-click on the model’s Surface
Chronology and set Background lithology to one of the available lithologies. When you set the
background lithology for a geological model and then enable the fault system, the background
lithology will be copied to each fault block.
If there is no drillhole data in the project or if the model is not based on drillhole data, you will
need to define the lithologies one-by-one. To do this, click on the Add button, enter a name for
the lithology and choose a colour.

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Faulted Models
This topic describes how to use the fault system to create and organise faults:
l The Fault System
l Fault Interactions
l Activating the Fault System
l Copying the Surface Chronology to an Empty Fault Block
l Faulted Model Display Options
Each geological model is created with a Fault System object that is used to construct faults.
Once the faults are active in the geological model, the geological model will be divided into
separate fault blocks, which will appear in the project tree as part of the model:

Each fault block has its own Surface Chronology, which can be modified without affecting
other fault blocks in the geological model. There is no top-level Surface Chronology for the
geological model once the Fault System has been activated. This means that lithology layers
can be constructed for a faulted model in two ways:
l Define the Surface Chronology before enabling the Fault System. All surfaces defined for
the unfaulted model will automatically be copied to each fault block. Some surfaces defined
for the model as a whole will not occur in every fault block, which can be corrected by
working with the surfaces in each fault block.
l Enable the Fault System before any surfaces are defined in the unfaulted model, then define
the Surface Chronology for each fault block. An aid to working with a faulted model in this
way is the ability to copy contact surfaces from one faulted block to another. See Copying
the Surface Chronology to an Empty Fault Block below.
Which approach is best depends on the model being built. You may already know where the
faults are and choose to define them and subdivide the geological model before defining any
lithology layers. On the other hand, sometimes it is not apparent where the faults are until the
layers have been built, in which case you can add the new fault, activate it in the model, then
work with the surfaces in each fault block.

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The Fault System

When a geological model is first created, the Fault System object is empty. To create faults,
right-click on the Fault System object and select from the options available. Many of these
options are similar to those for creating lateral extents. For more information, see:
l Extent From a Polyline
l Extent From GIS Vector Data
l Extent From Points
l Extent From Structural Data
l Extent From a Surface

Faults created from polylines and GIS vector data can be created as vertical walls or surfaces.
Faults created as surfaces can be modified by adding further data, as described in Editing
Faults.

Creating a fault from the base lithology or other contacts is similar to creating contact surfaces.
See Deposits and Erosions From the Base Lithology and Deposits and Erosions From Other
Lithology Contacts for more information.
Faults will appear in the project tree as part of the Fault System object and can be expanded to
show how they were created:

Once faults have been created, you can modify them as described in Editing Faults.

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Fault Interactions
Once all the faults required have been created, you can start defining the interactions between
the faults by double-clicking on the Fault System object. The Geological Model will be opened
with the Fault System tab displayed:

To add an interaction, click on a fault, then click the Add button. Select the Interaction Type
and set how the faults interact:

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Once you have defined each fault interaction, click OK to generate the fault system. Add the
Fault System object to the scene to check that the faults interact correctly.
You can also edit fault interactions by double-clicking on individual faults. The Edit Fault
window will open, which shows only the interactions for the selected fault:

Faults are not active in the geological model until the box is ticked for each fault in the Fault
System window, as described in Editing Faults. This means you can check the fault system
without regenerating the geological model.

Activating the Fault System

Activating the fault system divides the geological model into fault blocks, which can result in
considerable processing time for complex models. It is important, therefore, to define fault
interactions before enabling the fault system, otherwise a large number of fault blocks could
be generated that significantly increase processing time. See Fault Interactions above.

To activate the fault system in the geological model, double-click on the Fault System object
once again and tick the box for each fault. The model will be divided into separate fault blocks
that can be worked with in a similar manner to the geological model as a whole.

Copying the Surface Chronology to an Empty Fault Block

If you are working with a faulted model and have defined the Surface Chronology for one fault
block, you can copy the Surface Chronology to the empty fault blocks. To do this, right-click
on the Surface Chronology for which you have defined surfaces and select Copy Chronology
To. In the window that appears, select the fault blocks you want to copy contacts to and click
OK. The surfaces will be copied and you can modify them without affecting the surfaces in the
other fault blocks.

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Faulted Model Display Options

Drag the model into the scene or right-click on it and select View Object; these options add the
model to the shape list as a single object and you can change the visibility of each lithology by
clicking the Edit Colours button. You can also add the model to the scene as a series of output
volumes by right-clicking on the model and selecting View Output Volumes.
Another display option lets you view the individual fault blocks without displaying the lithology
layers. Right-click on the model and select View Fault Block Boundaries.
To work with a specific fault block, click on it in the scene. The window that appears displays the
name of the selected fault block:

You can also view the output volumes for each individual fault block by right-clicking on the
fault block in the project tree and selecting View Output Volumes.

Editing Faults
Once a fault has been defined, you can refine it in several ways:
l Add other data. This option is available for faults created as surfaces, but not for those
created as vertical walls. Right-click on the surface to see the options available, which will
depend on how the surface was created.
l Edit the surface with a polyline. Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select either
Edit > With Polyline. See Editing Surfaces with Polylines for more information.
l Edit the surface using structural data. Right-click on the surface and select Edit > With
Structural Data. See Editing Surfaces with Structural Data for more information.
The rest of this topic describes other options for editing faults. It is divided into:
l Surfacing Options for Faults
l Changing Fault Inputs
l Applying a Trend to a Fault

Surfacing Options for Faults

To change surfacing options for a fault, double-click on the fault in the project tree, then click
on the Surfacing tab.

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See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model and Honouring Surface Contacts for
information about the settings in the Surfacing tab.

The settings in the Surfacing tab will be disabled if the fault inputs have been replaced with a
mesh.

Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a fault, there are two ways to handle the data that lies outside
the fault boundary:
l Filter the data. The fault is only influenced by the data that falls inside the fault boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The fault is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
fault boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the fault is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.

Snapping to Data
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For faults, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.
l Off. The fault surface does not snap to the data used to create it.
l All data. The fault surface snaps to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which
includes drillhole data and any data added to the fault.
l Drilling only. The fault surface snaps to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole
data within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the fault. For
example, the fault surface will honour points data derived from drillhole data, but not points
data imported into the Points folder.
l Custom. The fault surface snaps to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information

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on these settings.

If you need the fault surface to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as
interpretations, select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as
interpretations, select Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual
objects.

Changing Fault Inputs

For faults, the Inputs tab shows all the data objects used to create the fault and whether the
Snap and Boundary filter options are enabled for each object used to define the fault. If an
input has any query filters defined, you can select one in this window.

You can also replace the fault’s inputs with a single mesh or add more data to the fault.

Replacing Fault Inputs with a Single Mesh

To replace the fault inputs with a single mesh, click on the Mesh option, then select from the
meshes available in the project.

When you select a single mesh to define the fault, all other inputs listed in the Inputs tab will

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be removed from the fault. This can result in objects being deleted from the project. For
example, if the fault has been edited using a polyline, the polyline will be deleted when the
inputs are replaced with the mesh. If you wish to retain such inputs, be sure to share the
object before changing the inputs. See Sharing Objects for more information.

The snap and boundary filtering controls in the Surfacing tab will be disabled as the settings
from the geological model will be used. The settings in the Trend tab will also be disabled as it is
not possible to set a trend for a fault defined from a mesh.

Adding Data to the Fault

To add more data to the fault, click on the Select Objects button, then select from the suitable
objects available in the project.

Snap Settings for Individual Inputs

The Snap setting determines whether or not the faults surface honours a particular data object.
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations, as discussed in Honouring Surface Contacts. To change snap settings
for a fault, click on the Surfacing tab and set Snap to data to Custom. You will then be able to
change Snap settings in the Inputs tab.

Boundary Filtering Settings for Individual Inputs

When data objects are added to a fault, there are two ways to handle the data that lies outside
the fault boundary:
l Filter the data. The fault is only influenced by the data that falls inside the fault boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The fault is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
fault boundary.
To change the Boundary filter settings for each object used to define a fault, click on the
Surfacing tab and set Boundary filter to Custom. You will then be able to change Boundary
filter settings in the Inputs tab.

Applying a Trend to a Fault

To apply a trend to a fault, either:
l Double-click on the fault in the project tree, then click on the Trend tab.
l Right-click on the fault in the project tree and select Adjust Surface. This opens the Edit
Fault window with the Trend tab displayed.
See Global Trends for information on using the controls in this tab.

The settings in the Trend tab will be disabled if the fault inputs have been replaced with a
mesh.

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Contact Surfaces
Defining the internal structure of a geological model involves generating contact surfaces that
correspond to the boundaries between lithological units, refining the contact surfaces,
arranging them in chronological order and then using the surfaces and the chronological order
to divide the geological model into units. The Surface Chronology object represents the
collection of contact surfaces and defines how they interact to produce the volumes of the
geological model. Factors that influence the interaction of contact surfaces with the volumes
of the geological model are:
l The order of the contact surfaces in the Surface Chronology. See Contact Surfaces in the
Surface Chronology.
l The type of contact surface. See Contact Surfaces Types for more information.
l The orientation of the older and younger sides of the surface. See Younging Direction.
The remainder of this topic describes how the different types of contact surface interact and will
help you in deciding how to model different units. For specific information on creating the
different types of contact surfaces, see:
l Deposits and Erosions
l Intrusions
l Veins
l Vein Systems
l Stratigraphic Sequences

Contact Surfaces in the Surface Chronology

When a geological model is first created, it is simply a volume that is assigned the background
lithology. This background lithology is initially “Unknown”, as although the model has
lithologies defined, Leapfrog Geo cannot determine what lithology to use for the background
lithology.

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The contact surfaces and their order in the Surface Chronology determine how they divide this
larger “Unknown” volume into known lithological units. The scene below shows the Surface
Chronology for four deposit contact surfaces and two intrusion contact surfaces, bounded by
the geological model extents (pink). The two intrusion contacts are labelled as Unknown on the
outside and the intrusion lithology on the inside:

The Surface Chronology is open, showing the contact surfaces in chronological order, with the
youngest at the top of the list. This is the order in which contact surfaces will be used to cut the
“Unknown” volume of a newly created model. The different types of contact surfaces cut older
volumes in different ways, which are described below in Contact Surfaces Types.
For the model shown above, the first contact surface to cut the geological model volume is the
oldest surface, D5 - D4 contacts. The volume is divided into D5 (red) below and D4 (green)
above:

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When the next contact surface (D4 - D3 contacts) is enabled in the model, the volume above
the contact surface is labelled with the lithology assigned to the surface’s younger side (blue):

Therefore, any volume in a geological model is labelled with the lithology assigned to the
youngest side of the surface that last cut the volume.
With a simple deposit geological model, as long as each side of each contact surface is assigned
a lithology, all volumes will be labelled with known lithologies. Intrusive contact surfaces,
however, are often of unknown lithology on the outside, as they contact multiple lithologies.
When the two intrusive surfaces in the model above are enabled but all deposit surfaces are
disabled, the unknown lithology is replaced with each intrusive lithology on the inner sides of
each contact surface, but outside each intrusive contact surface the lithology is not known:

If the outside of the older contact surface (green) is assigned a lithology (red), the volume
outside each intrusion is known and, therefore, the surrounding volume can be labelled:

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If, however, the outside of the younger intrusion is known but the outside of the older intrusion
is unknown, it is not possible to determine the lithology of the surrounding volume as the
lithology on the outer side of the surface making the first cut is not known:

Contact Surfaces Types

The different types of contact surfaces result in different shapes and cut older volumes in
different ways. The contact surface types are:
l Deposit. Deposit contact surfaces tend to be sheet-like, with the primary lithology on the
young side and the contacting/avoided lithologies on the older side. Deposits do not cut
older volumes. A volume defined by a deposit contact surface will, therefore, appear
conformably on top of older volumes.
l Erosion. Erosion contact surfaces are similar to deposits, but cut away other contact surfaces
on the older side of the erosion contact surface.
l Intrusion. Intrusion contact surfaces are rounder in shape, with an interior lithology that
represents the intrusion lithology. The intrusion removes existing lithologies and replaces
them with the intrusive lithology on the younger side of the contact surface. Often, the older
side of an intrusion contact surface is labelled “Unknown” as typically intrusions displace
multiple older lithologies.
l Vein. Vein contact surfaces remove existing lithologies and replace them with the vein
lithology within the boundaries defined by hangingwall and footwall surfaces and points
and a reference surface.
These terms are indicative of the resulting shape and cutting behaviour of a surface rather than
of the geological formations that can be modelled. In fact, it might make sense to model
something like basement granite as a deposit rather than as an intrusion when it forms the
lowest layer in the geological model. If there are no older layers for an intrusion-type contact
surface to remove and it is apparent from the drillhole data that the lithology simply fills the
lowermost parts of the model, then it makes sense to model it as a deposit.

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An important consideration in building contact surfaces is that they have an older side and a
younger side. This is described in more detail in Younging Direction below, but it is sufficient to
understand, at this point, that younging direction is one factor in determining how the different
types of contact surfaces cut older surfaces.

Deposit and Erosion Contact Surfaces

Deposits and erosions are both roughly flat surfaces. The difference between the two is that
deposits appear conformably on top of underlying older volumes and do not occur in regions
defined by older deposits, while erosions remove existing lithologies on the older side of the
erosion. This difference is illustrated here, using a model made up of three deposits, A, B and C:

The contact surfaces that define the three output volumes are the B-C contacts surface (pink)
toward the top of the model extents and the A-B contacts surface (gold) lower down:

An erosion contact surface (C-D contacts) added to the model cuts across the A-B and B-C
contacts. The younger (purple) side of the C-D contact surface faces up:

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Once the model is recalculated, the erosion (D) has cut away the deposits on the older side of
the erosion:

However, if the C-D contact surface is changed to be a deposit surface, D only occurs on the
younger side of the C-D contact surface and does not cut away the A, B and C volumes:

See Deposits and Erosions for information on techniques for creating deposits and erosions.

Intrusion Contact Surfaces

An intrusion is a type of contact surface that removes existing lithologies and replaces them
with the intrusive lithology. Intrusions are rounder in shape than deposits and erosions, with an
interior lithology that represents the intrusion lithology on the inside of the shape.
Adding an intrusion (E) surface added to the example model above as the youngest surface cuts
away the other lithologies on the inside of the surface:

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Note that the intrusion contacts multiple units. This is typical of intrusion contact surfaces as an
intrusion will usually displace multiple older lithologies. Although the outside of the intrusion is
not labelled with a lithology, the lithology of each volume the intrusion comes into contact with
can be known from the lithologies assigned to the deposit contact surfaces.
However, when all contact surfaces are intrusions, the lithology of the surrounding volume
cannot be known, which results in intrusion volumes surrounded by an Unknown volume:

In this instance, the contact surfaces each have a known side and an unknown side:

Adding the drillholes to the scene helps in understanding what lithology the outside of each
intrusion should be:

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In this case, opening the Surface Chronology and assigning AvT as the background lithology
results in a model for which all volumes are labelled with a known lithology:

See Intrusions for information on techniques for creating intrusions.

Vein Contact Surfaces

Veins remove existing lithologies and replace them with the vein lithology within the boundaries
defined by hangingwall and footwall surfaces and points and a reference surface. Here, a slice
has been made horizontally through a model made up of three deposits:

Adding five dykes modelled as veins and enabling them in the model results in the veins cutting
away each deposit at the point of contact:

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Here the sliced deposits are displayed but the veins are hidden in order to show how they cut
away the deposits:

See Veins for information on techniques for creating veins.

Younging Direction
An important factor in determining how surfaces interact is the younging direction of each
surface. Each contact surface has a younger side and an older side. For deposit and erosion
contact surfaces, Leapfrog Geo will, by default, put the younger side up, since this is
geologically reasonable in most situations. If, for example, you know that the geology is
overturned, you can change the younging direction once the surface has been created.
For intrusion contact surfaces, the younger side of the surface is the inside, although this can be
swapped if Leapfrog Geo has assigned it incorrectly, as may be the case with flatter intrusion
surfaces.
When contact surfaces are displayed in the scene, you can choose whether to display the
surfaces using the lithology or the younging direction. When the younging direction is
displayed, the younger side is typically green and the older side is brown:

When a contact surface is displayed using the younging direction, Leapfrog Geo by default
colours the younger side green and the older side brown.

Deposits and Erosions

This topic describes creating and editing deposits and erosions. The topic is divided into:
l Creating Deposits and Erosions
l Deposits/Erosions in the Project Tree
l Refining Deposits and Erosions
l Surfacing Options for Deposits and Erosions

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For a general introduction to how deposits and erosions interact with other contact surfaces,
see Deposit and Erosion Contact Surfaces in Contact Surfaces.

Creating Deposits and Erosions

Lithology data is often the most reliable data source to use when building geological surfaces,
and it is best to derive contact surfaces from lithology data when it is available. If no lithology
data is available, you can create deposits and erosions from other data in the project. You can
also create offset surfaces from other surfaces in the project, which is useful for creating a series
of surfaces. See Offset Surfaces for more information.

Deposits and Erosions From the Base Lithology

It is best to derive contact surfaces from lithology data, when it is available. There are two ways
to create contact surfaces from lithology data:
l Using the base lithology column assigned when the model was created. This is the process
described below.
l Using other lithology information available in the project. This is useful when you have
created an additional lithology column as part of correcting and working with the drillhole
data. For example, if when building a geological model it becomes apparent that changes
need to be made to the drillhole data, you can import additional data or create a new
column using the split lithology, group lithology or interval selection tools. See Deposits and
Erosions From Other Lithology Contacts for more information.
Selecting the From Base Lithology option opens the New Contact Points window:

Select the lithology you wish to use to create the surface from the Select primary lithology list;
this will be the older lithology (lower down) in the geological model. The Contacting/Avoided

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lithologies list shows the lithologies that contact the primary lithology and the number of
contacts. This helps in selecting which contacts to use to create the contact surface.
The options in the Lithology tab are useful for creating a surface when one lithology is
interbedded with another. For example, here we can see that the coarse sand is interbedded
with alluvium:

The solution to this is to create two surfaces from the Alluvium contacts, one using the contacts
above (younger contacts) and the other using the contacts below (older contacts):

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Note that the gravel contacts should be excluded for the surface created from the Use
contacts below option, as we can see from the drillhole data that gravel appears lower down in
the model than the surface we are creating. Do this by dragging the contacts that should be
excluded to the Ignored lithologies list:

Unspecified intervals are intervals that have no data. By default, unspecified intervals are
ignored when creating a contact surface, but you can also treat them as the primary lithology or
as avoided lithologies.

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For complex geologies, the up and down directions for the surface may not be clear. If this is the
case, untick the Horizontal Plane box. A reference plane will appear in the scene, with the up-
facing surface labelled A and the downward-facing surface labelled B:

Controlling the position of the reference plane is similar to controlling the position of the
moving plane:
l Use the handles in the scene window to move the plane.
l Set the Dip and Dip Azimuth values in the New Contact Points window. The reference
plane will be updated in the scene.
Once the reference plane is correctly oriented, click the Set From Plane button.

Setting a reference plane for contact points is different from applying a global trend to a
surface. To apply a global trend to a surface, double-click on the surface in the project tree
and click on the Trend tab. See Global Trends.

Data can be composited at the drillhole level or on a surface-by-surface basis. To composite

the data used to generate the contact surface, click on the Compositing tab. See Category
Composites for more information.
Click OK to create the contact surface, which will appear in the project tree under the Surface
Chronology. See Refining Deposits and Erosions below for more information on refining the
contact surface.

Deposits and Erosions From Other Lithology Contacts

Creating deposit and erosion contact surfaces using the From Other Contacts option is useful
when you have created an additional lithology column as part of correcting and working with
the drillhole data. For example, if when building a geological model it becomes apparent that

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changes need to be made to the drillhole data, you can import additional data or create a new
column using the split lithology, group lithology or interval selection tools. See Splitting
Lithologies, Grouping Lithologies and Interval Selection for more information.
The process is similar to creating a surface from the base lithology column, but you must first
select the lithology column you will use:

Select the First Lithology and Second Lithology, if known. Click OK. The New Contact Points
window will appear. Assign the Primary lithology, Contacting/Avoided lithologies and the
Ignored lithologies. These can only be selected from the model’s base lithology.
The rest of the process is similar to defining a contact surface from the base lithology. See
Deposits and Erosions From the Base Lithology above for more information.
Be sure to add the contact surface to the scene to view it and check that it is oriented correctly.
See Refining Deposits and Erosions below for more information on the different techniques
that can be used for adjusting a contact surface.

Deposits and Erosions From Other Data

If suitable lithology data is not available, deposits and erosions can be created from other data
in the project, such as GIS data, structural data, points, polylines and surfaces. The steps for
creating deposits and erosions from other data are similar, regardless of the data used to create
the surface:
l Right-click on the Surface Chronology and select one of the data types from the New
Deposit/Erosion menu.
l Select the data object that will be used to define the surface. This must already be in the
project, unless you are using a polyline, in which case you are given the option to create a
new polyline.
l Select the First lithology and Second lithology. These are the lithologies that will be
assigned to each side of the contact surface. The lithologies you can choose from are those
defined for the geological model in the Lithologies object (see Model Lithologies).
l Set whether the First lithology is older or younger than the Second lithology. Leapfrog Geo
will, by default, put the younger side of a contact surface up, but this can be changed later.

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Here, a points data object is being used to create a deposit:

For polylines, you first set the lithologies and the younging order:

Click OK to move on to the next step:

You can draw the polyline in the scene directly by selecting the New Drawing option. You can
also use any polyline in the project by selecting the Existing Polyline option. You can then
select the required polyline from the list.
The new contact surface will appear in the project tree under the Surface Chronology. Add the
contact surface to the scene to view it and check that it is oriented correctly.
Expand the surface in the project tree to see how it was made. Here, a number of surfaces have
been created using different types of data:

If creating a surface from a new polyline, the polyline will not be able to be used elsewhere in
the project unless it has been shared. To share the polyline, expand the contact surface in the
project tree, right-click on the polyline and select Share. The polyline will then be available
elsewhere in the project.

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As further refinements are made to the surface, that information will also be added to the
contact surface in the project tree.

Deposits/Erosions in the Project Tree

The name Leapfrog Geo automatically assigns to a deposit or an erosion is the lithologies
assigned to each side of the surface. In the project tree, expand the surface to see how it was
made:

Double-click on the surface to edit it. Double-click on the contact points object ( ) to edit the
lithology and change compositing parameters.
As further refinements are made to the surface, that information will also be added to the
project tree. See Refining Deposits and Erosions below for more information.

Refining Deposits and Erosions

You can refine deposits and erosions in several ways:
l Add other data. Right-click on the surface to see the options available, which will depend on
how the surface was created. See Adding Data to Surfaces for more information.
l Edit the surface with a polyline. Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select either
Edit > With Polyline. See Editing Surfaces with Polylines for more information.
l Edit the surface using structural data. Right-click on the surface and select Edit > With
Structural Data. This option is available for deposits and erosions created from lithology
data and other data in the project, but not for offset surfaces. See Editing Surfaces with
Structural Data for more information.
To edit the surface’s settings, double-click on it in the project tree. In the Lithologies tab,
change the lithologies assigned to each side of the surface, if required.
You can swap the younging direction if the direction was assigned incorrectly when the surface
was created. The change will be reflected in the scene. Note that changing the younging
direction does not change which lithology is older or younger.
The difference between deposit and erosion contact surfaces is how they cut older lithologies,
as described in Contact Surfaces. For this reason, it is possible to change between the two types
using the Contact Type setting.
For information on other techniques for refining deposits and erosions, see:
l Surfacing Options for Deposits and Erosions
l Offset Surfaces

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Surfacing Options for Deposits and Erosions

Surfacing options for deposits and erosions can be changed by double-clicking on the surface
in the project tree and then clicking on the Surfacing tab. There are additional settings related
to boundary filtering and snapping to data in the Inputs tab.

Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a surface, there are two ways to handle the data that lies
outside the surface’s boundary:
l Filter the data. The surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the surface’s
boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The surface is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
surface’s boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the surface is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.

Snapping to Data
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations. See Honouring Surface Contacts.
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For individual contact surfaces, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.
l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.
l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surfaces.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surfaces.
l Custom. Surfaces snap to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab for each surface.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in

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interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

If you need a surface to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

Setting the Surface Resolution

See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model for information about the surface resolution
settings in the Surfacing tab.

Applying a Trend to a Deposit/Erosion

There are two ways to change the trend for a deposit or an erosion:
l Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select Adjust Surface.
l Double-click on the surface in the project tree and then click on the Trend tab.
See Global Trends for more information.

Intrusions
This topic describes creating and editing intrusions. The topic is divided into:
l Creating Intrusions
l Intrusions in the Project Tree
l Displaying Intrusion Points
l Refining Intrusions
l Surfacing Options for Intrusions
l Applying a Trend to an Intrusion
l Clipping Values for Intrusions
l Interpolation Settings

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For a general introduction to how intrusions interact with other contact surfaces, see Intrusion
Contact Surfaces in Contact Surfaces.

Creating Intrusions
Lithology data is often the most reliable data source to use when building geological surfaces,
and it is best to derive contact surfaces from lithology data when it is available. If no lithology
data is available, you can create intrusions from other data in the project.
One thing to keep in mind for all intrusion contact surfaces is that an intrusion removes all the
existing material on the younger side of the contact surface. Therefore:
l An intrusion should always have the younger side of its surface labelled with the intruded
material. This is called the “interior lithology”.
l The older side will typically be labelled “Unknown” as an intrusion will usually displace
multiple older lithologies. This is called the “exterior lithology”.

Intrusions from Lithology Contacts

Lithology data is often the most reliable data source to use when building geological surfaces,
and it is best to derive contact surfaces from lithology data when it is available. There are two
ways to create intrusions from lithology data:
l Using the base lithology column assigned when the model was created.
l Using other lithology information available in the project. This is useful when you have
created an additional lithology column as part of correcting and working with the drillhole
data. For example, if when building a geological model it becomes apparent that changes
need to be made to the drillhole data, you can import additional data or create a new
column using the split lithology, group lithology or interval selection tools.
To create a new intrusion from lithology contacts, right-click on the Surface Chronology
object and select either New Intrusion > From Base Lithology or New Intrusion > From Other
Contacts. The only difference in the two methods is that when creating an intrusion from other
contacts, you must first select the lithology column from those available in the project and
specify the First lithology and the Second lithology.

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Select the intrusive lithology as the interior lithology. Other lithologies will be displayed in the
Exterior lithologies list. Drag any younger lithologies to the Ignore list.

Unspecified intervals are intervals that have no data. By default, unspecified intervals are
ignored when creating an intrusion, but you can also treat them as the interior lithology or as
exterior lithologies.
Sometimes intrusive boundaries are poorly defined, with fragments of country rock intermixed
with the intrusive body. This can result in very small segments near the edges of the intrusion.
Modelling the fine detail is not always necessary, and so compositing can be used to smooth
these boundaries. Compositing parameters are set in the Compositing tab:

The settings in this tab are described in Category Composites.

Click OK to create the intrusion, which will be added to the project tree as part of the Surface
Chronology object.

Intrusions from Other Data

If suitable lithology data is not available, intrusions can be created from other data in the
project, such as GIS data, structural data, points, polylines and surfaces. The steps for creating
intrusions from other data are similar, regardless of the data used to create the surface:
l Right-click on the Surface Chronology and select one of the data types from the New
Intrusion menu.

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l Select the data object that will be used to define the surface. This must already be in the
project, unless you are using a polyline, in which case you are given the option to create a
new polyline.
l Select the First lithology and Second lithology. These are the lithologies that will be
assigned to each side of the contact surface. The lithologies you can choose from are those
defined for the geological model in the Lithologies object (see Model Lithologies).
l Set whether the First lithology is older or younger than the Second lithology. Leapfrog Geo
will, by default, put the younger side of a contact surface up, but this can be changed later.
Here, a points data object is being used to create an intrusion:

For polylines, you first set the lithologies and the younging order:

Click OK to move on to the next step:

You can draw the polyline in the scene directly by selecting the New Drawing option. You can
also use any polyline in the project by selecting the Existing Polyline option. You can then
select the required polyline from the list.
The new intrusion will appear in the project tree under the Surface Chronology. Add the
contact surface to the scene to view it and check that it is oriented correctly.
Expand the surface in the project tree to see how it was made.
If creating a surface from a new polyline, the polyline will not be able to be used elsewhere in
the project unless it has been shared. To share the polyline, expand the contact surface in the

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project tree, right-click on the polyline and select Share. The polyline will then be available
elsewhere in the project.
As further refinements are made to the surface, that information will also be added to the
contact surface in the project tree.

Intrusions in the Project Tree

The name Leapfrog Geo automatically assigns to an intrusion is the name of the intrusive
lithology. In the project tee, expand the intrusion to see how it was made:

Double-click on the intrusion to edit it. Double-click on the points object ( ) to edit the
intrusion lithology, change compositing parameters and change point generation options.
As further refinements are made to the surface, that information will also be added to the
project tree. See Refining Intrusions below for more information.

Displaying Intrusion Points

When you view the intrusion points in the scene, you can display only the contact points or all
the points used in creating the intrusion. To display all points, click on the points object ( ) in
the shape list and tick the box for Show volume points. Here, only the contact points are
displayed:

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When the volume points are displayed, points with negative values are those outside the
surface, while points with positive values are those inside:

You can change the way intrusion points are generated by double-clicking on the points object (
) in the project tree. See Intrusion Point Generation Parameters.

Refining Intrusions
You can refine intrusions in several ways:
l Add other data. Right-click on the surface to see the options available, which will depend on
how the surface was created. See Adding Data to Surfaces for more information.
l Edit the surface with a polyline. Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select either
Edit > With Polyline. See Editing Surfaces with Polylines for more information.
l Edit the surface using structural data. Right-click on the surface and select Edit > With
Structural Data. See Editing Surfaces with Structural Data for more information.
To edit an intrusion’s settings, double-click on it in the project tree. In the Lithologies tab,
change the lithologies assigned to each side of the surface, if required.

Surfacing Options for Intrusions

Surfacing options for an intrusion can be changed by double-clicking on the surface in the
project tree and then clicking on the Surfacing tab. There are additional settings related to
boundary filtering and snapping to data in the Inputs tab.

Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a surface, there are two ways to handle the data that lies
outside the surface’s boundary:
l Filter the data. The surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the surface’s
boundary.

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l Leave the data unfiltered. The surface is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
surface’s boundary.
The boundary of an intrusion can be the geological model boundary or a fault block boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the surface is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.

Snapping to Data
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations, as discussed in Honouring Surface Contacts.
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For individual contact surfaces, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.
l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.
l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surfaces.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surfaces.
l Custom. Surfaces snap to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab for each surface.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

If you need a surface to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

Surface Resolution
See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model for information about the surface resolution
settings in the Surfacing tab.

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Clicking Additional options adds Value Clipping and Interpolant tabs to the window and also
allows the use of a structural trend in the Trend tab:

These are described in Applying a Trend to an Intrusion, Clipping Values for Intrusions and
Interpolation Settings below.

Applying a Trend to an Intrusion

There are two ways to change the trend for an intrusion:
l Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select Adjust Surface.
l Double-click on the surface in the project tree and then click on the Trend tab.
See Global Trends for more information.
You can also use a structural trend for an intrusion. To do this, click the Additional options
button in the Surfacing tab, then click on the Trend tab.

Click on Structural Trend, then select the required trend from the list. See Structural Trends
for more information.

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Clipping Values for Intrusions

You can change settings for intrusions by double-clicking on the contact surface in the project
tree. The Value Clipping tab is only available for intrusion contact surfaces.
In the Value Clipping tab, you can manipulate the data distribution by clipping the data:

Clipping caps values that are outside the range set by the Lower bound and Upper bound
values. For example, if you change the Upper bound from 16.00 to 10.00, distance values
above 10.00 will be regarded as 10.00.
The Automatic clipping setting has different effects based on whether a global trend or
structural trend is set in the Trend tab:
l When a global trend is applied, Leapfrog Geo automatically clips the values. That is, the
Automatic clipping setting is Do clipping and Leapfrog Geo sets the Lower bound and
Upper bound from the data. To disable clipping, untick Automatic clipping, then untick Do
clipping. To change the Lower bound and Upper bound, untick Automatic clipping, then
change the values.
l When a structural trend is applied, Leapfrog Geo automatically does not clip the values. To
clip values, untick Automatic clipping, then tick Do clipping. Again, Leapfrog Geo sets the
Lower bound and Upper bound values from the data and you can change them, if required.

Interpolation Settings
You can change settings for an intrusion by double-clicking on the intrusion in the project tree
and clicking on the Interpolant tab. For more information on the settings in this tab, see:
l Interpolant Functions
l The Spheroidal Interpolant Function

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l The Linear Interpolant Function

Veins
This topic describes creating and editing veins. It is divided into:
l Creating Veins
l Veins in the Project Tree
l Displaying Veins
l Refining Veins
l Surfacing Options for Veins
l The Vein Reference Surface
l The Vein Boundary
l Editing Vein Segments
For a general introduction to how veins interact with other contact surfaces, see Vein Contact
Surfaces in Contact Surfaces.
A vein is a type of contact surface that removes existing lithologies and replaces them with the
vein lithology within the boundaries defined by hangingwall and footwall surfaces constructed
from selected input data. A reference surface is defined that is the best fit for the hangingwall
and footwall surfaces. The reference surface can be curved or planar.

Creating Veins
Options for creating veins are:
l From lithology data, using the base lithology used to define the geological model or other
contacts available in the project. See Veins From Lithology Contacts below.
l From GIS vector data, point data and polylines. See Veins From Other Data below.
l Creating a vein system. This results in a single lithology that represents all the veins in a
model. Veins and their interactions are defined within the vein system. See Vein Systems.

Veins From Lithology Contacts

To create a new vein from lithology contacts, right-click on the Surface Chronology object and
select either New Vein > From Base Lithology or New Vein > From Other Contacts. The only
difference in the two methods is that when creating a vein from other contacts, you must first
select the lithology column from those available in the project and specify the Vein lithology
and Outside lithology.

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In the New Vein window, select the Vein lithology:

When extracting the hangingwall and footwall points, Leapfrog Geo automatically includes
points at the ends of the drillholes. To exclude these points, untick the Include points at the
ends of holes. Once the vein has been created, this setting can be changed by double-clicking
on the vein segments object ( ) in the project tree.
Click OK to create the vein, which will be added to the project tree as part of the Surface
Chronology object.

Veins From Other Data

If suitable lithology data is not available, veins can be created from other data in the project,
such as GIS data, points and polylines. The steps for creating veins from other data are similar,
regardless of the data used to create the surface:
l Right-click on the Surface Chronology and select one of the data types from the New Vein
menu.
l Select the data objects for the Hangingwall and Footwall. These objects must already be in
the project.
l Select the Vein lithology and the Outside lithology. The lithologies you can choose from
are those defined for the geological model in the Lithologies object (see Model Lithologies).
Here, points data is being used to create a vein:

Select points data objects for both the Hangingwall and Footwall, then click OK to create the
new vein. The new contact surface will appear in the project tree under the Surface
Chronology. Expand the vein in the project tree to see how it was made.

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Veins in the Project Tree

Veins are stored in the project tree as part of the Surface Chronology object. Further
modifications can be made to the vein by working on the objects that make up the vein. Expand
the vein in the project tree to view these objects.
Here, the hangingwall and footwall surfaces and points are displayed in the scene for a vein
defined from lithology data. The reference surface (yellow) and the vein segments (red and blue
cylinders) used to create the vein are also shown:

This vein is made up of:

l Hangingwall and footwall surfaces ( ), which, when expanded, show the hangingwall and
footwall data objects used to create the surfaces.
o Export hangingwall and footwall surfaces as described in Exporting Meshes and
Exporting an Elevation Grid.
o Add points and GIS vector data to the meshes by right-clicking on them and selecting
Add.
o Edit the hangingwall and footwall surfaces with polylines by right-clicking on the surface
and selecting one of the Edit options.
o Change contact honouring and boundary filtering options as described in Surfacing
Options for Veins below.

l Vein segments and pinch out segments ( ) extracted from drillhole data. These are only
included when a vein is created from lithology contacts.
l A reference surface ( ) calculated as the best fit surface using the hangingwall and footwall
surfaces.
o The reference surface can be curved or planar.
o You can add points, GIS vector data and polylines to a curved reference surface.
o If a curved reference surface is made up of multiple objects, you can switch between the
objects and change how they are filtered in order to see the effects on the vein.

l A boundary object ( ), which is empty when the vein is first created.

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It is not possible to add structural data or polylines with orientation information to the
hangingwall, footwall and reference surfaces. If you edit these surfaces with a polyline, your
options for editing the polyline will be limited.

Displaying Veins
You can change the way the different objects that make up the vein are displayed using options
in the shape list:

Refining Veins
To edit a vein’s settings, double-click on it in the project tree. In the Lithologies tab, change the
lithologies assigned to each side of the surface, if required. For information on the settings in the
Surfacing and Inputs tabs, see Surfacing Options for Veins below.

Surfacing Options for Veins

Surfacing options for veins can be changed by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree
and then clicking on the Surfacing tab. There are additional settings related to boundary
filtering and snapping to data in the Inputs tab.

Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a surface, there are two ways to handle the data that lies
outside the surface’s boundary:
l Filter the data. The surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the surface’s
boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The surface is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
surface’s boundary.
The boundary of a vein can be the geological model boundary or a fault block boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the surface is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.
The Filter segments by boundary setting in the Inputs tab is enabled by default when the
Boundary filter setting in the Surfacing tab is All data or Drilling only. When Filter segments

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by boundary is enabled, the vein surface will only be influenced by the segments that falls
inside the vein boundary.

Snapping to Data
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations, as discussed in Honouring Surface Contacts.
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For individual contact surfaces, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.
l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.
l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surfaces.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surfaces.
l Custom. Surfaces snap to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab for each surface.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

If you need a surface to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

Surface Resolution
Note that although you can change the Surface resolution for a vein, the Adaptive option is
not available, even when the resolution for the geological model is set to be Adaptive.

Vein Thickness
Veins have two thickness settings that force the vein to maintain a minimum or maximum
thickness. If footwall and hangingwall points are in pairs, it is not usually necessary to set the
Minimum thickness or Maximum thickness.
l If the vein intersects itself, set the Minimum thickness to a value that is less than the
minimum distance between any two contact points.
l If the vein widens out toward the edges of the geological model set the Maximum thickness
to a value that limits the effects of long segments.

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If the Pinch out option is enabled, you will not be able to set the Minimum thickness.
If you set the Maximum thickness and Pinch out, the Pinch out is applied before the Maximum
thickness.

Note that if Snap to data is enabled, snapping occurs after the vein thickness has been
calculated. If it appears that the vein surface is not honouring the thickness setting, check
what data the surface is snapping to.

Vein Pinch Out

Vein walls can be set to pinch out where drillhole data indicates they do not occur. This is
achieved by creating ‘outside’ intervals on drillholes that do not have an interior vein segment.
These intervals are then flipped with respect to interior vein intervals, which, in effect means the
footwall and hangingwall orientation has the opposite sense to the nearest interior intervals.
This forces the hangingwall and footwall surfaces to cross, thereby pinching out.
The Pinch out option is disabled when a vein is first created. To enable it, double-click on the
vein in the project tree and click on the Surfacing tab. Tick the box for Pinch out. Click OK to
process the changes. The vein will be updated and pinch out points ( ) will be added to the
vein in the project tree.
For this vein, the surface occurs even where the vein lithology (green cylinders) does not occur
and terminates at the boundary of the geological model:

When the vein is set to pinch out, it tapers out where the vein lithology does not occur:

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You can change how much the vein pinches out by excluding some pinch out segments. To do
this, right-click on the pinch out segments ( ) in the project tree and select Edit in Scene. The
Pinch Out Properties window will appear in the scene. Click on a segment to view information
about it and set it to be Excluded, if required. Note that the segments displayed in the scene
below are the pinch out segments rather than the drillhole segments shown in earlier scenes.
The grey segments are excluded and the currently selected segment is highlighted in the scene:

Click the Save button ( ) to view the effect of the excluded pinch out segments on the vein.
Excluding the two segments results in the vein terminating at the boundary of the geological
model:

The Vein Reference Surface

A vein includes a reference surface ( ) that is the best fit for the objects that make up the
hangingwall and footwall surfaces. There are two types of reference surface.
l Curved. A curved reference surface can be used to make a vein follow the medial trend of
the source data, which leads to a more natural modelled shape. This is the type of reference
surface used by default for veins created from lithology data. A curved reference surface can
be used for veins created from other types of data by adding data to the reference surface, as
described in Adding Data to the Reference Surface.
l Planar. A planar reference surface is simply the best linear fit between the hangingwall and
footwall surfaces. See Using a Planar Reference Surface.

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To adjust the reference surface ( ), double-click on it in the project tree or right-click on it and
select Open. The Reference Surface window will appear, showing the data used to for the
reference surface. This is the reference surface for a vein created from lithology data, and so the
midpoints for the vein lithology are used as Input values:

Boundary filtering for the midpoints used to create a curved reference is controlled by the
setting for the vein itself. See Boundary Filtering in Surfacing Options for Veins for more
information.

Adding Data to the Reference Surface

In order for a vein created from data other than lithology data to use a curved reference surface,
other data must be added to it.

It is not possible to add structural data or polylines with orientation information to the
reference surface. If you edit the reference surface with a polyline, your options for editing
the polyline will be limited.

To add data, right-click on the reference surface in the project tree and select Add or Edit. Once
you have added data, the Curved reference surface option will be enabled in the Reference
Data window and the objects used to adjust the surface will appear in the list of Input values:

You can enable or disable the different data objects to see their effects on the vein by ticking
and unticking the Active box.

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The Boundary filter setting for each object determines whether or not the data that lies outside
the reference surface’s boundary is filtered.
l Tick Boundary filter so that the surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the
reference surface’s boundary.
l Untick Boundary filter if you want the surface to be influenced by the data both inside and
outside the reference surface’s boundary.
Click OK to process the changes.

Using a Planar Reference Surface

Veins created from objects other than lithology data use a planar reference surface, and this
option can also be selected for veins created from lithology data. To use a planar reference
surface, select the Planar reference surface option in the Reference Surface window. The
plane will be displayed in the scene, together with handles that can be used to adjust it:

These handles work in the same manner as the moving plane controls, as described in The
Moving Plane.
Click OK to update the reference surface and view the results.

The Vein Boundary

Once a vein has been created, you can change its boundary by:
l Adding a Polyline to the Vein Boundary
l Adjusting the Vein Boundary Plane

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Adding a Polyline to the Vein Boundary

To change the boundary using a polyline, right-click on the boundary object ( ) in the project
tree and select Edit. The current vein boundary will appear in the scene, together with drawing
controls. Begin drawing the new boundary, as described in Drawing in the Scene, ensuring
that the polyline drawn closes and does not intersect itself.

When you save the boundary, the vein will be updated to reflect the changes to the boundary.
If you want to revert to the original boundary, right-click on the boundary object ( ) and select
Delete Polyline.

Adjusting the Vein Boundary Plane

To adjust the boundary plane, right-click on the boundary object ( ) in the project tree and
select Adjust Plane. The Adjust Boundary Plane window will appear and handles to adjust the
plane will appear in the scene:

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Click OK to apply the changes to the vein. To revert to the original boundary plane, right-click
on the boundary object and select Adjust Plane. In the Adjust Boundary Plane window, click
on the Set to Default button and click OK.

Editing Vein Segments

When a vein has been created from contact points, you can change the vein segment settings
by double-clicking on the vein segments object ( ) in the project tree. This opens the Edit Vein
window.
When extracting the hangingwall and footwall points, Leapfrog Geo automatically includes
points at the ends of the drillholes. To exclude these points, untick the Include points at the
ends of holes.

Vein Segment Orientation

If you need to change the orientation of individual vein segments, e.g. for curved veins, you can
do this by right-clicking on the vein segments object ( ) in the project tree and selecting Edit In
Scene. If the vein segments object is already in the scene, you can edit it by clicking the Edit
button ( ) in the shape list.
The Vein Segment Orientations window will appear in the scene. Click on a vein segment to
view information about that segment:

Points A and B are labelled in the scene and can be changed by unticking the box for each point
and choosing whether to exclude the point or make it a hangingwall or footwall point. Once
you have finished editing vein segments, click the Save button ( ).
If you wish to return to the default settings, ensure the Auto box is ticked for each point.

Vein Systems
This topic describes creating a vein system for a geological model. The topic is divided into:
l Creating a Vein System
l Adding Veins to the Vein System
l Editing the Veins

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l Changing Vein System Lithology Settings

l Setting Vein Interactions
An alternative to defining veins one-by-one is to create a vein system. The vein system
represents a single lithology within the geological model. For example, for a model of a
sedimentary system cross-cut by vertical intersecting dykes, we could model the veins one-by-
one, in which case each “vein” in the model is represented by a separate lithology:

Modelled as a vein system, however, the veins are grouped into a vein system object ( ) that
defines the lithology for the vein system as a whole:

Note that the individual veins are part of the vein system.
The vein system defines how the veins interact, and veins can be added to it using the same
techniques used to create individual veins.

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Creating a Vein System

To create a vein system, right-click on the Surface Chronology and select New Vein System. In
the window that appears, select the Vein lithology:

If the vein system contacts only one lithology, set the Outside lithology. Otherwise, leave
Outside lithology set to Unknown.
Click OK. An empty vein system ( ) will be added to the project tree under the Surface
Chronology. Double-click on it to change the lithologies.

Adding Veins to the Vein System

Once the vein system has been created, you can create veins using the same techniques
described in Veins From Lithology Contacts and Veins From Other Data.
To add veins to the vein system, right-click on the vein system and select one of the New Vein
options. Veins will appear in the project tree as part of the vein system object and can be
expanded to show how they were created.

Editing the Veins

The techniques for editing vein system veins are the same as those for veins created one-by-
one. See Refining Veins.

Changing Vein System Lithology Settings

You can change the lithology settings for a vein system by double-clicking on the vein system (
) in the project tree. In the Lithology tab, change the Vein lithology or the Outside lithology.

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Setting Vein Interactions

Once all the veins required have been created, you can start defining the interactions between
them by double-clicking on the vein system ( ), then clicking on the Vein System tab:

The veins appear in the list from highest priority to lowest. Organise the veins in chronological
order before defining interactions.

The Vein priority determines which veins other veins can interact with. You cannot define an
interaction for the highest priority vein in the list, and other veins in the list can interact only
with those of higher priority.

Here, Vein B can only interact with Vein A, the higher priority vein:

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The lowest priority vein, Vein D, can interact with all the other veins in the system:

To define an interaction, click on a vein, then click the Add button. Add an interaction for each
vein and then set the Side on which they interact.

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Once you have defined the required vein interactions, tick the box for each vein, then click OK.
Add the Vein System object to the scene to check that the veins interact correctly.
You can also edit vein interactions by double-clicking on the individual veins, which opens the
Edit Vein window:

Veins and the vein system are not active in the geological model until the box is ticked for
each vein in the Edit Vein System window and the vein system is enabled in the Surface
Chronology. This means you can check the vein system without regenerating the geological
model.

Stratigraphic Sequences
When you have a series of continuous layers in a geological model, you can model each layer
separately, as part of a single stratigraphic sequence or using the offset surface tool. Modelling
a stratigraphic sequence works best for sequences uniform in thickness with a consistent
stacking order. If a layer varies in thickness, the contact surface may not match the contact
points in some places. This will be a consideration when choosing whether to model layers as
separate layers, as offset surfaces or as part of a stratigraphic sequence. For information on the
offset surface tool, see Offset Surfaces.
Once you have created a stratigraphic sequence, you can refine it by adding and removing
layers and by adjusting the surfaces produced.
This topic describes using the stratigraphic sequence tool and is divided into:
l Creating a Stratigraphic Sequence
l Editing the Stratigraphic Sequence
l Editing Individual Surfaces

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Creating a Stratigraphic Sequence

To create a stratigraphic sequence, right-click on the Surface Chronology object and select
New Stratigraphy. The New Stratigraphic Sequence window will appear:

Select the lithologies at the top and bottom of the stratigraphic sequence. To do this, select the
Lithology Above and Lithology Below from the lithologies available in the geological model:

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Next, click the Add Lithologies button to view available lithologies:

Select the lithologies that you want to use in the stratigraphic sequence, then click OK to add
the layers to the Stratigraphic Lithologies list. Make sure they arranged in the correct order.
In the New Stratigraphic Sequence window, select whether the Bottom Contact Type is an
erosion or a deposit.
When the Surfaces avoid drillhole segments option is enabled, the surfaces in the stratigraphic
sequence will not cut through intervals of lithologies that are selected for the stratigraphic
sequence.

Stratigraphic sequences created in earlier versions of Leapfrog Geo (before 3.0) used only the
contact information; intervals were ignored and stratigraphic sequence surfaces could cut
through intervals. To upgrade a stratigraphic sequence created in earlier versions, edit the
stratigraphic sequence to enable Surfaces avoid drillhole segments.

Next, click on the Surfacing tab to set the surfacing settings for each surface created for the
sequence:

For the Boundary filter and Snap to data options, it is possible to override these settings for the
individual contact surfaces that are part of the stratigraphic sequence. To do this, select

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Custom. Once the stratigraphic sequence has been created, expand it in the project tree and
double-click on each surface to change its surfacing options, as described in Contact
Honouring and Boundary Filtering for Individual Surfaces below.

Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a surface, there are two ways to handle the data that lies
outside the surface’s boundary:
l Filter the data. The surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the surface’s
boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The surface is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
surface’s boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the surface is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.
All contact surfaces that make up a stratigraphic sequence will inherit the Boundary filter
setting from the stratigraphy unless Boundary filter is set to Custom.

Snapping to Data
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For a stratigraphic sequence, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.
l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.
l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surfaces.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surfaces.
l Custom. Surfaces snap to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab for each surface.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

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All contact surfaces that make up a stratigraphic sequence will inherit the Snap to data setting
from the stratigraphy unless Snap to data is set to Custom.

Surface Stiffness
The Surface Stiffness controls the smallest bend a surface will make, where a higher value will
result in a smoother surface that bends less. The default value is 0, which is no stiffening.
Click OK to create the stratigraphy, which will be added to the project tree as part of the Surface
Chronology object.

Editing the Stratigraphic Sequence

The objects that make up the stratigraphic sequence include the generated contact surfaces
and any points that result in pinch-out errors:

Correcting Pinch-Out Errors

Add the pinch-out errors object ( ) to the scene to view the points that are causing errors. To
find out more about the errors, right-click on the sequence and select List Errors.
In the Stratigraphic Errors window, information is provided about the different errors that
occur in the stratigraphic sequence, with pinch-out errors and other errors listed separately:

Use this information, together with the pinch-out error points, to either remove lithologies from
the sequence or adjust surfaces using any of the tools available for individual surfaces, as
described in Editing Individual Surfaces below.

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Remove lithologies from the sequence by double-clicking on the sequence in the project tree,
then reorganising the lithologies in the Chronology tab. For example, here, the pinch-out errors
shown in the window above have been corrected by removing the affected surfaces from the
sequence and changing the Lithology Above and Lithology Below:

You can also ignore an error by ticking the Ignored box in the Stratigraphic Errors window.

Surfacing Options
To change a stratigraphic sequence’s surfacing options, double-click on the sequence in the
project tree and click on the Surfacing tab. See Boundary Filtering and Snapping to Data
above for more information on the settings in this tab. Note that boundary filtering and snap
settings can also be set for the individual surfaces that make up the stratigraphic sequence,
which is described in Contact Honouring and Boundary Filtering for Individual Surfaces
below.

Applying a Trend
To apply a global trend to a stratigraphic sequence either right-click on it in the project tree and
select Adjust Surface or double-click on the stratigraphic sequence and then click on the
Trend tab. You can then apply a trend to the surface as described in Global Trends.

Editing Individual Surfaces

Individual surfaces that make up a stratigraphic sequence can be modified by:
l Contact Honouring and Boundary Filtering for Individual Surfaces
l Adding Data to Individual Surfaces
l Editing Surface Contacts

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Contact Honouring and Boundary Filtering for Individual Surfaces

There are general boundary filtering and snap settings for the stratigraphic sequence as a
whole, but it is possible to override these settings for the individual surfaces that are part of the
stratigraphic sequence. To do this, first double-click on the stratigraphic sequence itself, then
click on the Surfacing tab.
l To change boundary filtering for an individual surface, Boundary filter must be set to
Custom for the stratigraphic sequence.
l To change the snap setting for an individual surface, Snap to data must be set to Custom for
the stratigraphic sequence.
Next, double-click on an individual surface in the project tree. The window that appears shows
all the data objects used to create the surface:

See Boundary Filtering and Snapping to Data for more information.

Adding Data to Individual Surfaces

You can also refine the individual surfaces in a stratigraphic sequence in several ways:
l Add other data. Right-click on the surface to see the options available, which will depend on
how the surface was created. See Adding Data to Surfaces for more information.
l Edit the surface with a polyline. Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select either
Edit > With Polyline. See Editing Surfaces with Polylines for more information.

It is not possible to add structural data or polylines with orientation information to individual
surfaces in a stratigraphic sequence. If you edit a surface with a polyline, your options for
editing the polyline will be limited.

Editing Surface Contacts

You can edit the contacts used to generate the surface by expanding the contact surface in the
project tree and double-clicking on the points object ( ). See Extracting Contact Points from
Drillhole Data for more information on the settings in the Edit Contacts window.

Offset Surfaces
The offset surface tool is useful way of creating a series of deposit or erosion contact surfaces
from a reference mesh. The surface can be offset from the reference mesh by points or by a

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fixed distance, and additional options for offsetting to points can be adjusted once the surface
has been created.
Here a deposit contact surface (blue) has been created using the reference mesh (green) offset
to points (red):

Important considerations when creating offset surfaces is the characteristics of the reference
mesh, especially in relation to the geological model’s boundary.
l It is best to use a reference mesh that extends beyond the model’s boundary. If the reference
mesh is too small, the offset surface may be distorted where the reference mesh does not
occur.
l If the reference mesh changes significantly near the model’s boundary, offset surfaces may
show unexpected changes. Offset surfaces are projected in the direction the reference mesh
is going, and if the reference mesh changes direction just inside the boundary, that change
will be reflected in the offset surface. This is normal if there is data that takes the reference
mesh in a different direction, but if this is not desirable for the offset surface, consider making
the geological model’s boundary smaller.
The rest of this topic describes creating and working with an offset surface. It is divided into:
l Creating an Offset Surface
l The Offset Surface in the Project Tree
l Refining an Offset Surface
l Changing Surfacing Options for an Offset Surface
l Changing Offset Limits
l Changing the Reference Mesh
l Editing the Reference Mesh

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Creating an Offset Surface

To start creating an offset surface, right-click on the Surface Chronology and select New
Deposit/Erosion > From Offset Surface. The New Offset Surface window will appear:

In the window that appears, you need to select a reference mesh, then either select Surface
points to offset to or set a Constant offset.
Click Select reference mesh to view the meshes available in the project.
If you wish to offset from the reference mesh using a fixed distance, click Constant offset and
set the Distance. For Direction, selecting Forward offsets the surface on the younger side of
the reference mesh, and selecting Backward offsets on the older side.
If you wish to offset to points, click Add. You can offset to:
l Base lithology contacts or other lithology contacts in the project.
l Other data in the project. GIS data, points data and polylines can be used.
If you offset to points, you will be able to set additional options such as distance limits once the
surface has been created. See Changing Offset Limits below for more information.
Select the First Lithology and Second Lithology from the lithologies defined for the model. If
you have added base lithology contacts or other contacts to the surface, these will be set
automatically from the data used.
Click OK to create the surface, which will appear in the project tree as part of the Surface
Chronology.

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The Offset Surface in the Project Tree

The name Leapfrog Geo automatically assigns to an offset surface is the lithologies assigned to
each side of the surface. In the project tree, expand the surface to see how it was made:

Double-click on the surface to edit it. Double-click on the contact points object ( ) to edit the
lithology and change compositing parameters.
As further refinements are made to the surface, that information will also be added to the
project tree. See Refining an Offset Surface below for more information.

Refining an Offset Surface

You can refine an offset surface by:
l Adding other data. Right-click on the surface to see the options available, which will depend
on how the surface was created. See Adding Data to Surfaces for more information.
l Editing the surface with a polyline. Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select
either Edit. See Editing Surfaces with Polylines for more information.

It is not possible to add structural data or polylines with orientation information to an offset
surface. If you edit an offset surface with a polyline, your options for editing the polyline will
be limited.

To edit the surface’s settings, double-click on it in the project tree. In the Lithologies tab,
change the lithologies assigned to each side of the surface, if required.
You can swap the younging direction if the direction was assigned incorrectly when the surface
was created. The change will be reflected in the scene. Note that changing the younging
direction does not change which lithology is older or younger.
An offset surface can be created as a deposit or as an erosion. The difference between deposit
and erosion contact surfaces is how they cut older lithologies, as described in Contact
Surfaces. For this reason, it is possible to change between the two types using the Contact
Type setting.

An offset surface cannot be adjusted by applying a trend.

Changing Surfacing Options for an Offset Surface

Surfacing options for an offset surface can be changed by double-clicking on the surface in the
project tree and then clicking on the Surfacing tab. There are additional settings related to
boundary filtering and snapping to data in the Inputs tab.

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Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a surface, there are two ways to handle the data that lies
outside the surface’s boundary:
l Filter the data. The surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the surface’s
boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The surface is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
surface’s boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the surface is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.

Snapping to Data
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations, as discussed in Honouring Surface Contacts.
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For individual contact surfaces, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.
l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.
l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surfaces.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surfaces.
l Custom. Surfaces snap to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab for each surface.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

If you need a surface to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

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There is also a snap setting that can be used when offset limits are used. This option is discussed
in Changing Offset Limits below.

Surface Resolution
The surface resolution for an offset surface can be inherited from the geological model or it can
be set specifically for the surface. To change the surface resolution for an offset surface,
double-click on the surface in the project tree and then click on the Surfacing tab. See Surface
Resolution for a Geological Model for information about the surface resolution settings in the
Surfacing tab.

Smoothing
The Smoothing parameter in the Surfacing tab can be used for all offset types other than
Constant. If your reference surface is highly curved, you may see distortions in the offset
surface. If this is the case, set Smoothing to a higher value.
Increasing the Smoothing parameter will generally result in faster processing when offsetting to
large distances. If you are finding that processing time is excessively long for an offset surface,
consider increasing Smoothing. In some situations, however, increasing Smoothing can
exaggerate imperfections in the reference surface.
If you are offsetting by a small distance and processing is taking longer than expected, consider
setting Smoothing to None.

Changing Offset Limits

There are four options for Offset limits in the Surfacing tab. Three relate to offsetting to points
and the fourth to offsetting to a fixed distance from the reference mesh.
l The None option is the default setting used when a surface is created as an offset to points.
No distance limits are used in creating the offset surface, and it simply follows the points
used.
l The Unidirectional limits option allows you to set distance limits in one direction. Points
outside the limits will be disregarded.
l The Bidirectional limits option allows you to set distance limits in both directions, and points
outside these limits are disregarded. This setting is useful for modelling folded surfaces such
as veins.
l The Constant offset option offsets the surface to a fixed distance from the reference mesh.
The Forward direction is the younger side of the reference mesh.
If the Snap to data outside limits setting is enabled, the surface will honour data, even if it is
outside the distance limits. This option will be greyed out if Snap to data is off.

Changing to a Constant Offset

To use a constant offset rather than points, select the Constant offset option and set the
Distance and Direction to offset the surface. Selecting Forward offsets the surface on the
younger side of the reference mesh, whereas selecting Backward offsets on the older side.
If you created a surface as an offset to points and switch to using a constant offset, the points
added to the surface when it was created will be disabled.

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Changing to an Offset to Points

If you created an offset surface using a constant offset, you can change the surface to offset to
points, but you must first add data to it. Do this by right-clicking on it in the project tree and
selecting Add. Once you have added the data you wish to use, double-click on the surface and
click on the Surfacing tab. Change the Offset limits option from Constant offset to one of the
other three options.

Changing the Reference Mesh

To change the surface used as the reference mesh, click on the Inputs tab, then click on the
reference mesh:

Select from the surfaces available in the project, keeping in mind the considerations discussed in
Changing the Reference Mesh.

Editing the Reference Mesh

You can also edit the reference mesh as you would other surfaces. All dependent offset surfaces
will be updated as you make changes to the reference mesh.
Changing the younging direction of the reference mesh affects how offset surfaces are
generated.
l For a constant offset surface, the younging direction of the reference mesh determines the
forward and backward direction of the offset surface and, therefore, determines the location
of the offset surface. Changing the younging direction of the reference mesh results in
dependent offset surfaces changing location; the updated offset surface will be the mirror
image of the original relative to the reference mesh.
l For surfaces offset to points, the location is determined by the points themselves. If the
reference mesh’s younging direction is changed, the offset surface’s younging direction will
also be flipped. The offset surface will still honour the contact data and will still appear at the
same location relative to the reference mesh.

Structural Surfaces
A structural surface uses contact data and non-contact structural data to create a surface. A
structural surface can interact with other volumes in the model as a deposit, an erosion or an
intrusion contact surface. The shape of the structural surface is suggested by the non-contact
structural data used.

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When creating a structural surface, there are two options for declustering the non-contact
structural data:
l The input data is automatically declustered as part of creating the structural surface. There
are no additional controls that determine how the data is declustered.
l Use a declustered structural data set as the non-contact input to the surface. This approach
is recommended over the first approach as you can change how the data is declustered.
The rest of this topic describes how to create and work with a structural surface. It is divided
into:
l Creating a Structural Surface
l The Structural Surface in the Project Tree
l Refining a Structural Surface
l Surfacing Options for a Structural Surface
l Non-Contact Structural Inputs Settings
l Applying a Trend to a Structural Surface
l Value Clipping

Creating a Structural Surface

To create a new structural surface, right-click on the Surface Chronology and select New
Structural Surface. The New Structural Surface window will appear:

Use the Add buttons to add non-contact structural data and on-surface contacts, then set the
First lithology and Second lithology. Other settings are:
l Query Filter. Select from the query filters defined for the selected structural data object.
l Use Polarity. Untick the box to use tangents only.

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l Contact Type. Structural surfaces can be deposit, erosion or intrusion contacts. The same
algorithm is used for each setting; the only difference is in how the surface interacts with
other surfaces.

The Structural Surface in the Project Tree

The name Leapfrog Geo automatically assigns to a structural surface is the lithologies assigned
to each side of the surface. In the project tree, expand the surface to see how it was made:

As further refinements are made to the surface, that information will also be added to the
project tree. See Refining a Structural Surface below for more information.

To add more non-contact structural data to the surface, right-click on it in the project tree
and select Add > Structural Data. In the window that appears, tick the box for Non-contact
Structural Data:

Refining a Structural Surface

You can refine structural surfaces in several ways:
l Add other data. Right-click on the surface to see the options available, which will depend on
how the surface was created. See Adding Data to Surfaces for more information.
l Edit the surface with a polyline. Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select either
Edit > With Polyline. See Editing Surfaces with Polylines for more information.
l Edit the surface using structural data. Right-click on the surface and select Edit > With
Structural Data. See Editing Surfaces with Structural Data for more information.
To edit the surface’s settings, double-click on it in the project tree. In the Lithologies tab,
change the lithologies assigned to each side of the surface, if required.
You can swap the younging direction if the direction was assigned incorrectly when the surface
was created. The change will be reflected in the scene. Note that changing the younging
direction does not change which lithology is older or younger.

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The Contact Type setting determines how the structural surface interacts with other
lithologies, as described in Contact Surfaces. A structural surface can be a deposit, erosion or
intrusion contact surface.
For information on other techniques for refining structural surfaces, see Surfacing Options for
a Structural Surface below.

Surfacing Options for a Structural Surface

Surfacing options for a structural surface are accessed by double-clicking on the surface in the
project tree and clicking on the Surfacing tab. There are additional settings related to boundary
filtering and snapping to data in the Inputs tab.

Setting the Surface Resolution

See Surface Resolution for a Geological Model for information about the surface resolution
settings in the Surfacing tab.

Boundary Filtering
When data objects are added to a surface, there are two ways to handle the data that lies
outside the surface’s boundary:
l Filter the data. The surface is only influenced by the data that falls inside the surface’s
boundary.
l Leave the data unfiltered. The surface is influenced by the data both inside and outside the
surface’s boundary.
The boundary of a structural surface can be the geological model boundary or a fault block
boundary.
The Boundary filter setting determines how data used to define the surface is filtered:
l Off. Data is not filtered.
l All data. All data is filtered.
l Drilling only. Only drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data are filtered.
l Custom. Only the data objects specified in the Inputs tab are filtered.

Snapping to Input Data

Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations. See Honouring Surface Contacts.
There is a Snap to data setting for a geological model as a whole that is set in the Geological
Model > General tab (see Editing a Geological Model). Snap to data can also be set on a
surface-by-surface basis by double-clicking on the surface in the project tree and then clicking
on the Surfacing tab.
For individual contact surfaces, the options are:
l Inherit from GM. The setting for the geological model as a whole is used. This is the default
setting.

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l Off. Surfaces do not snap to the data used to create them.

l All data. Surfaces snap to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the surfaces.
l Drilling only. Surfaces snap to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance but not to other data used to modify the surfaces.
l Custom. Surfaces snap to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab for each surface.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

If you need a surface to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

Non-Contact Structural Inputs Settings

For the non-contact structural inputs, you can:
l Change the Query Filter setting. Select from the query filters defined for the selected
structural data object.
l Change the Use Polarity setting. Untick the box to use tangents only.
l Change the Boundary filter setting, if the Boundary filter setting in the Surfacing tab is set
to Custom.

Applying a Trend to a Structural Surface

There are two ways to change the trend for a structural surface:
l Right-click on the surface in the project tree and select Adjust Surface.
l Double-click on the surface in the project tree and then click on the Trend tab.
See Global Trends for more information.

Value Clipping
In the Value Clipping tab, you can manipulate the data distribution by clipping the data.
Clipping caps values that are outside the range set by the Lower bound and Upper bound
values. For example, if you change the Upper bound from 16.00 to 10.00, distance values
above 10.00 will be regarded as 10.00.

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When Automatic clipping and Do clipping are enabled, Leapfrog Geo sets the Lower bound
and Upper bound from the data. To change the Lower bound and Upper bound, untick
Automatic clipping, tick Do clipping and then change the values.

The Surface Chronology

When you create a contact surface, it appears in the project tree under the Surface
Chronology object, but it is not enabled and, therefore, does not affect the geological
model volumes. This means you can work on the surface without having to reprocess the
model whenever you make a change to the surface. In Leapfrog Geo, you can easily define,
enable and remove contact surfaces from a model, and you can experiment with modelling
lithologies using different techniques in order to arrive at a geologically reasonable model.

To add a contact surface to the surface chronology, double-click on the Surface Chronology
object. The Surface Chronology window will be displayed:

In the project tree, the surfaces are also arranged in chronological order:

The Surface Chronology determines the overall chronological order of the contact surfaces in
the model. If you build your models from the bottom up, you will find that often the contact
surfaces are in the correct chronological order when you first open the Surface Chronology
window. However, you can easily rearrange the chronology using the Younger and Older
buttons. Tick the boxes for surfaces you wish to include in the model. When you click OK, the
included surfaces will be used to subdivide the geological model into lithological volumes. The
volumes will appear in the Output Volumes folder.

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Output volumes are named according to the lithologies assigned to each side of the contact
surfaces that bound each volume. If the lithology assigned to an output volume cannot be
determined, it will be assigned the Background lithology.

If you are working with a faulted model and have defined the Surface Chronology for one
fault block, you can copy the Surface Chronology to the empty fault blocks. See Copying
the Surface Chronology to an Empty Fault Block.

Refined Models
When you have built a geological model and want to model further within one of the volumes,
you can do this by creating a refined geological model. This changes the way the original
(parent) geological model is organised in the project tree and makes it possible to create a sub-
model within one or more of the lithological volumes.

Before starting to refine lithological volumes, it is a good idea to make a copy of the original
geological model.

To start refining a lithological volume, first create the refined geological model. To do this,
right-click on the Geological Models folder and select New Refined Model:

In the window that appears, select the geological model to refine and then select from its
lithologies.

Next, set the Base lithology column, Filter data and Surface resolution. You cannot change
the Base lithology column once the refined geological model has been established, but you
will be able to change the resolution and data filter settings.
Click OK to create the refined lithology.

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A new refined model ( ) will be created in the project tree and the parent geological model will
be moved into it. Here, a model called “M Campaign GM” has been used to created a new
refined model, with the QzP volume selected as the refined lithology ( ):

The sub-model ( ) is created inside the refined geological model and has its own Boundary,
Lithologies, Surface Chronology and Output Volumes objects.
You can work with the sub-model in the same manner you would a normal geological model.
The exceptions are:
l The sub-model’s boundary cannot be refined directly. However, changes to the parent
geological model will be updated in the sub-model’s boundary.
l The sub-model cannot have its own fault system. If the parent geological model is faulted,
the sub-model will have its own fault blocks in which you can work.
See Editing the Sub-Model for information on refining the sub-model.
You can still work with the parent geological model in the usual manner. Any changes to the
parent geological model that change the extents of the sub-model will be reflected in the sub-
model’s boundary.
You can create additional sub-models by right-clicking on the refined model ( ) and selecting
Refine Lithology.
A sub-model can be viewed and evaluated in the same manner as normal geological models.
However, sub-models cannot be used as layer guides for flow models.

Deleting the refined geological model deletes all models it contains. To return to the original
project tree organisation for a geological model, delete the sub-models:

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Once there are no more sub-models, the refined model object is also deleted, leaving the
parent geological model.

The refined model has its own Lithologies table, which contains all the lithologies from the
parent model and any sub-model lithologies. You cannot add lithologies to this table, but you
can change the colours used to display them in the scene, as described in Model Lithologies.
To add more lithologies to a refined model, add them to the lithology table in either the sub-
model or the parent geological model.
The refined model also has its own Output Volumes folder that combines information from the
parent geological model and the sub-model. If no surfaces have been created in the sub-
model, adding the refined model to the scene will simply display the volumes from the parent
geological model. If surfaces have been created in the sub-model, then the volumes of the
sub-model will be displayed alongside the volumes from the parent geological model.

Editing the Sub-Model

Work with the sub-model in the same manner described in Editing a Geological Model. See
Contact Surfaces and The Surface Chronology.
The sub-model can have resolution settings that are different from those of the parent model.
See Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo and Surface Resolution for a Geological Model.

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To change the lithology’s resolution settings, double-click on the sub-model ( ) in the project
tree. The Geological Model window appears:

This window has only three tabs:

l There is no Boundary tab because the sub-model’s boundary can only be modified by
modifying the parent geological model.
l There is no Fault System tab because a sub-model cannot have its own fault system.

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Numeric Models
The FastRBF algorithm employs interpolation functions to estimate values from known data.
From these estimated values, geological surfaces are constructed as part of the model-building
process.
With the Numeric Models folder, you can create numeric models and change their parameters.
l An RBF interpolant describes a physical quantity that varies continuously in space. An RBF
interpolant can be used to model, for example, grade distribution, with isosurface values set
to represent both minimum concentrations of interest and regions of high value. See RBF
Interpolants.
l A multi-domained RBF interpolant is an RBF interpolant that has a number of individual sub-
interpolants that are bounded by the fault blocks or output volumes of a selected geological
model. Changes to all sub-interpolants can be made by editing the parent interpolant, while
sub-interpolants can be edited to account for local influences on the values used, the trend
and interpolation parameters. See Multi-Domained RBF Interpolants.
l An indicator RBF interpolant calculates the likelihood that values will fall above and below a
specific threshold. An indicator RBF interpolant can be used to produce a volume inside
which further modelling is carried out. For example, you can create an indicator RBF
interpolant for grade values above a certain threshold, and then use the inside volume as a
lateral extent for another model. See Indicator RBF Interpolants.
l A distance function calculates the distance to a set of points. As with an indicator RBF
interpolant, a distance function is useful for restricting processing to a specific region. To do
this, create a distance function, select the objects to use, then add at least one buffer. You
can then use one of the distance function’s isosurfaces as a lateral extent for another model.
See Distance Functions.
Values that can be interpolated include downhole numeric data, composited drillhole data and
points data. See Interpolant Functions for a general introduction to interpolation.
The rest of this topic describes:
l Importing a Variogram Model
l Copying a Numeric Model
l Creating a Static Copy of a Numeric Model
l Exporting Numeric Model Volumes and Surfaces
l Exporting Numeric Model Midpoints

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Importing a Variogram Model

Leapfrog Geo can import spheroidal variogram models exported from Snowden Supervisor.
The settings that can be imported are:
l The anisotropy settings in the Trend tab
l The Nugget, Total Sill, Base Range and Alpha settings in the Interpolant tab
To import a variogram model, first create an interpolant. Next, right-click on the interpolant and
select Import Variogram Parameters. In the window that appears, navigate to the folder that
contains the XML file and select it. Click Open. The interpolant will be updated with the
parameters in the XML file.

The imported variogram model overwrites the parameters in the interpolant, which cannot
be undone. If you wish to save the original settings, make a copy of the interpolant before
importing the new parameters.

Once the interpolant has been updated, you can edit it further by double-clicking on the
interpolant in the project tree.

Copying a Numeric Model

Creating a copy of a numeric model is a useful way of experimenting with changes to a model.
To copy a numeric model, right-click on it in the project tree and select Copy. Enter a name for
the copy of the model and click OK. The copy will be added to the project tree.

Creating a Static Copy of a Numeric Model

Creating a static copy preserves a snapshot of a numeric model that does not change, even
when changes are made to the data on which the original model was dependent. This is a
useful way of storing historical models and comparing models. Static copies can be exported
from Leapfrog Geo, as described in Exporting Numeric Model Volumes and Surfaces below.
To create a static copy of a numeric model, right-click on it in the project tree and select Static
Copy. Enter a name for the copy of the numeric model and click OK. The copy will be added to
the Numeric Models folder.
The objects that make up a static copy of a numeric model depend on the type of model:
l For an RBF interpolant, a static copy is made up of a Legend object, a Boundary object, and
all isosurfaces and output volumes created in building the model.
l For a multi-domained RBF interpolant, a static copy is made up of a Legend object, a
Boundary object, and the output volumes created in building the model. There are also
static copies of the sub-interpolants, which are the same as static copies of RBF interpolants.
l For an indicator RBF interpolant, a static copy is made up of a Legend object, a Boundary
object, the model’s isosurface and the output volumes.

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Static models created in versions of Leapfrog Geo before 2.2 copied only the output volumes
and the legend, and the static model appeared in the shape list only as a single line. When
these static models are upgraded and displayed in the scene, the individual output volumes
will be added to the shape list.

To view the date a static copy was created, right-click on it in the project tree and select
Properties. The date the copy was created is in the General tab.

Exporting Numeric Model Volumes and Surfaces

There are three options for exporting a numeric model’s output volumes and surfaces. These
are:
l Export an output volume or a surface as a mesh. Right-click on it in the project tree and click
Export. You will be prompted for a file name and location. See Exporting a Single Mesh.
l Export an output volume as a thickness grid. Right-click on it in the project tree and click
Export Thickness Grid. See Thickness Grids.
l Export multiple output volumes and surfaces. Right-click on the interpolant in the project
tree and select Export. See Exporting Multiple Meshes from Models.

Exporting Numeric Model Midpoints

To export interval midpoints from a numeric model, right-click on the model’s values object ( )
and select Export. Interval midpoints can be exported in the following formats:
l CSV text file (*.csv)
l DXF file (*.dxf)
l Snowden Supervisor CSV file (*.csv)
l Isatis 3D points file (*.asc)
l Drawing Files (2013/LT2013) (*.dwg)
The values exported are the midpoints of each segment, the X-Y-Z values and the hole ID. The
Snowden Supervisor and Isatis 3D points formats also include the interval length, when the
model has been created from drillhole data.
In each case, you will be prompted for a filename and location.

You can extract interval midpoints from drillhole data and then export them from the Points
folder. See Extracting Interval Midpoints from Drillhole Data for more information.

RBF Interpolants
If the data is both regularly and adequately sampled, different RBF interpolants will produce
similar results. In practice, however, it is rarely the case that data is so abundant and input is

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required to ensure an interpolant produces geologically reasonable results. For this reason, only
a basic set of parameters are required when an RBF interpolant is first created. Once the
interpolant has been created, you can refine it to factor in real-world observations and account
for limitations in the data.
The rest of this topic describes how to create and modify RBF interpolants. It is divided into:
l Creating an RBF Interpolant
l The RBF Interpolant in the Project Tree
l Interpolant Display
l RBF Interpolant Statistics
l Modifying an RBF Interpolant’s Boundary with Lateral Extents
l Changing the Settings for an RBF Interpolant

Creating an RBF Interpolant

To create an RBF interpolant, right-click on the Numeric Models folder and select New RBF
Interpolant. The New RBF Interpolant window will be displayed:

This window is divided into four parts that determine the values used to create the interpolant,
the interpolant boundary, any compositing options and general interpolant properties.

If you are unsure of some settings, most can be changed later. However, the Numeric values
object selected when the interpolant is created cannot be changed.

Values Used
In the Values To Interpolate part of the New RBF Interpolant window, you can select the
values that will be used and choose whether or not to filter the data and use a subset of those
values in the interpolant.

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You can build an interpolant from either:

l Numeric data contained in imported drillhole data.
l Points data imported into the Points folder.
All suitable data in the project is available from the Numeric values list.

Applying a Query Filter

If you have defined a query filter and wish to use it to create the interpolant, select the filter from
the Query filter list. Once the interpolant has been created, you can remove the filter or select a
different filter.

Applying a Surface Filter

All available data can be used to generate the interpolant or the data can be filtered so that only
the data that is within the interpolant boundary or another boundary in the project influences
the interpolant. The Surface Filter option is enabled by default, but if you wish to use all data in
the project, untick the box for Surface Filter. Otherwise, you can select the Interpolant
Boundary or another boundary in the project.
You can use both the Query Filter option and the Surface Filter option together.

The Interpolant Boundary

There are several ways to set the Interpolant Boundary:
l Enter values to set a Custom boundary.
l Use the controls in the scene to set the Custom boundary dimensions.
l Select another object in the project from the Enclose Object list, which could be the
numeric values object being interpolated. The extents for that object will be used as the basis
for the Custom boundary dimensions.
l Select another object in the project to use as the Interpolant Boundary. Click the Existing
model boundary or volume option and select the required object from the list.
Once the interpolant has been created, you can further modify its boundary. See Modifying an
RBF Interpolant’s Boundary with Lateral Extents and Adjusting the Interpolant Boundary
below.

Compositing Options
When numeric values from drillhole data are used to create an interpolant, there are two
approaches to compositing that data:
l Composite the drillhole data, then use the composited values to create an interpolant. If you
select composited values to create an interpolant, compositing options will be disabled.
l Use drillhole data that hasn’t been composited to create an interpolant, then apply
compositing settings to the interpolated values. If you are interpolating values that have not
been composited and do not have specific Compositing values in mind, you may wish to
leave this option blank as it can be changed once the model has been created.

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If you are interpolating points, compositing options will be disabled.

See Numeric Composites for more information on the effects of the Compositing length, For
end lengths less than and Minimum coverage settings.

General Interpolant Properties

Set the Surface resolution for the interpolant and whether or not the resolution is adaptive. See
Surface Resolution in Leapfrog Geo for more information on the effects of these settings. The
resolution can be changed once the interpolant has been created, so setting a value in the New
RBF Interpolant window is not vital. A lower value will produce more detail, but calculations
will take longer.
The Volumes enclose option determines whether the interpolant volumes enclose Higher
Values, Lower Values or Intervals. Again, this option can be changed once the interpolant has
been created.
Enter a Name for the new interpolant and click OK.
Once you have created an RBF interpolant, you can adjust its properties by double-clicking on
it. You can also double-click on the individual objects that make up the interpolant.
See also:
l Copying a Numeric Model
l Creating a Static Copy of a Numeric Model
l Exporting Numeric Model Volumes and Surfaces

The RBF Interpolant in the Project Tree

The new interpolant will be created and added to the Numeric Models folder. The new
interpolant contains objects that represent different parts of the interpolant:

l The Boundary object defines the limits of the interpolant. See Adjusting the Interpolant
Boundary.
l The Trend object describes the trend applied in the interpolant. See Changing the Trend for
an RBF Interpolant.
l The points data values object contains all the data used in generating the interpolant. See
Adjusting the Values Used.

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l The Isosurfaces folder contains all the meshes generated in building the interpolant.
l The Output Volumes folder contains all the volumes generated in building the interpolant.
Other objects may appear in the project tree under the interpolant as you make changes to it.

Interpolant Display
Display the interpolant by:
l Dragging the interpolant into the scene or right-clicking on the interpolant and selecting
View Output Volumes. Both actions display the interpolant’s output volumes.
l Right-clicking on the interpolant and selecting View Isosurfaces.

RBF Interpolant Statistics

You can view the approximated mean for each output volume by right-clicking on the
interpolant and selecting Properties. Click on the Statistics tab:

You can copy the information displayed in the Statistics tab to the clipboard for use in other
applications.

Modifying an RBF Interpolant’s Boundary with Lateral Extents

RBF interpolants are created with a basic set of rectangular extents that can then be refined
using other data in the project. These extents usually correspond to the ground surface and
known boundaries. Creating extents can also be used to restrict modelling to a particular area
of interest; for example, modelling can be restricted to a known distance from drillholes by
applying a distance function as a lateral extent. Extents do not need to be strictly vertical
surfaces and can be model volumes.

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Creating Lateral Extents

To create an extent, expand the RBF interpolant in the project tree. Right-click on the Boundary
object and select from the New Lateral Extent options. Follow the prompts to create the
extent, which will then appear in the project tree under the interpolant’s Boundary object.
New extents are automatically applied to the boundary being modified. Leapfrog Geo usually
orients a new extent correctly, with red presenting the inside face of the extent and blue
representing the outside face. If this is not the case, you can change the orientation by right-
clicking on the extent in the project tree and selecting Swap Inside.

Extent from a Polyline

You can create an extent from a polyline that already exists in the project or you can draw a new
one. If you want to use an imported polyline, import it into the Polylines folder before creating
the new extent.
To create a new extent from a polyline, right-click on the interpolant’s Boundary object and
select New Lateral Extent > From Polyline. In the window that appears, select whether you
will create a new polyline or use an existing one:

You can create the extent as a Vertical Wall or Surface. If you create the lateral extent as a
Surface, you will be able to modify it using additional data, as described below. A lateral
extent created as a Vertical Wall, however, cannot be modified.

Click OK to generate the new extent. If you have chosen to create a New Drawing, the drawing
controls will appear in the scene and you can begin drawing, as described in Drawing in the
Scene.
The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary object.

If the surface generated does not fit the polyline adequately, you can increase the quality of
the fit by adding more points to the polyline. See Drawing in the Scene for information on
adding points to polylines.

Extents created from polylines can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

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Extent from GIS Vector Data

GIS data in the project can be used to create a lateral extent for an RBF interpolant. Once the
data you wish to use has been imported into the project, right-click on the interpolant’s
Boundary object and select New Lateral Extent > From GIS Vector Data.
In the window that appears, select the data object you wish to use:

You can create the extent as a Vertical Wall or Surface. If you create the lateral extent as a
Surface, you will be able to modify it using additional data, as described below. A lateral
extent created as a Vertical Wall, however, cannot be modified.

If you select the Surface option, you can use the GIS data object with its own elevation data or
projected onto the topography:

Using the On Topography option makes sense for GIS data as it is, by nature, on the
topography. The On Topography option also mitigates any issues that may occur if elevation
information in the GIS data object conflicts with that in the project.
Click OK to create the new extent. The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the
Boundary object.
Extents created from GIS data can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

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Extent from Points

To create a new extent from points data, right-click on the interpolant’s Boundary object and
select New Lateral Extent > From Points. The Select Points To Add window will be displayed,
showing points data available in the project:

Select the information you wish to use and click OK.

The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary object.
Extents created from points can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

Extent from Structural Data

Planar structural data can be used to create a lateral extent for an RBF interpolant. You can
create a new structural data table or use a table that already exists in the project. If you want to
use categories of structural data in creating the extent, use an existing table and create filters for
those categories before creating the lateral extent.
To start, right-click on the interpolant’s Boundary object and select New Lateral Extent > From
Structural Data. The New Structural Data window will be displayed, showing structural data
available in the project:

Select the New Drawing option to draw the structural data points directly in the scene.

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Select the Existing Structural Data option to use a table in the Structural Modelling folder.
With this option, you will be able to select from the categories available in the data table, if
query filters have been created for those categories:

Click OK to generate the new extent. If you have chosen to create a New Drawing, the drawing
controls will appear in the scene and you can begin drawing, as described in Creating New
Planar Structural Data Tables. To share the new structural data table, right-click on it and
select Share. The table will be saved to the Structural Modelling folder.
The new extent will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary object.
Extents created from structural data can be modified by adding points data, GIS vector data and
structural data. You can also add polylines and structural data to the extent. See Adding Data
to an Extent, Editing an Extent with a Polyline and Editing an Extent with Structural Data
for more information.

Extent from a Surface

To use a surface as lateral extent for an RBF interpolant, right-click on the interpolant’s
Boundary object and select New Lateral Extent > From Surface. The Select Boundary
window will appear, showing all the meshes that can be used as an extent:

Select the required mesh and click OK. The extent will be added to the interpolant’s Boundary
object.
You cannot modify an extent created from a mesh by adding data, editing with polylines or
structural data or by applying a trend. However, the extent is linked to the mesh used to create
it, and updating the mesh will update the extent.

Extent from Distance to Points

Leapfrog Geo can calculate the distance to set of points and use the resulting distance buffer as
a lateral extent for an RBF interpolant. To create a new lateral extent from a distance buffer,

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right-click on the interpolant’s Boundary object and select New Lateral Extent > From
Distance To Points. The Smoothed Distance Buffer window will appear:

Select the Distance and set an Anisotropy, if required.

The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.
l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line
on the moving plane.
l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.
You can also use the Set to list to choose different options Leapfrog Geo has generated based
on the data used to build the interpolant. Isotropic is the default option used when the
interpolant is created.
Click OK to create the new extent, which will appear in the project tree as part of the Boundary
object.
To change the extent’s settings, expand the interpolant’s Boundary object in the project tree
and double-click on the extent. Adjust the Distance and Anisotropy, if required.
Extents created from a distance to points function can be modified by adding points data and
GIS vector data. See Adding Data to an Extent.

Extent from a Distance Function

A distance function calculates the distance to a set of points and can be used to bound an RBF
interpolant. You can use an existing distance function as a lateral extent or create a new one.
To use a distance function as a lateral extent, right-click on the interpolant’s Boundary and
select New Lateral Extent > From Distance Function. If there are no distance functions in the
project, you will be prompted to create a new one. See Distance Functions for information on
defining and editing the distance function.

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When there are already distance functions in the project, you will be prompted to choose
between creating a new function or using an existing one:

To use an existing function, select it from the list and set a Buffer distance. Click OK to create
the lateral extent.
When you create a new distance function, it will be part of the interpolant’s Boundary object
and will not be available elsewhere in the project. To share it within the project, expand the
lateral extent in the project tree and right-click on the distance function. Select Share. The
distance function will be saved to the Numeric Models folder.
To change the extent’s settings, expand the interpolant’s Boundary object in the project tree
and double-click on the extent. Adjust the Distance and Anisotropy, if required.

Changing a Lateral Extent’s Settings

For lateral extents created from polylines, GIS data, points and structural data, you can change
the extent’s settings by double-clicking on it in the project tree.

In the Surfacing tab, you can change surface resolution and contact honouring options, which
are described below. In the Trend tab, you can apply a trend to the extent, which is described in
Applying a Trend.

Surface Resolution
For RBF interpolants, the resolution of lateral extents is inherited from the settings in the
interpolant’s Outputs tab, but the adaptive isosurfacer is automatically disabled. Enter a
different Surface resolution value, if required, and tick Adaptive to enable the adaptive
isosurfacer.

Contact Honouring
Often, surfaces should honour drillhole data and treat data objects such as polylines and GIS
data as interpretations. For extents, the Snap to data setting in the Surfacing tab determines

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whether or not the extent honours the data used to create it. Options are:
l Off. The extent does not snap to the data used to create it. This is the default setting.
l All data. The extent snaps to all data within the Maximum snap distance, which includes
drillhole data and any data added to the extent.
l Drilling only. The extent snaps to drillhole data and data objects derived from drillhole data
within the Maximum snap distance, but not to other data used to modify the extent. For
example, the extent will honour points data derived from drillhole data, but not points data
imported into the Points folder.
l Custom. The extent snaps to the data objects indicated in the Inputs tab that are within the
Maximum snap distance.

Take care in enabling snapping and in selecting what data the surface will snap to, as the
more data you include, e.g. by setting a large Maximum snap distance or selecting All data
for Snap to data, the greater the possibility that errors in the data or assumptions inherent in
interpretations (e.g. polylines) will cause distortions in the meshes. If you do enable snapping,
it is best to snap only to drilling data. See Honouring Surface Contacts for more information
on these settings.

Whatever the setting, you can see what objects are snapped to by clicking on the Inputs tab.
If you need the extent to honour drillhole data but treat other data objects as interpretations,
select Drilling only. To honour some data objects while treating others as interpretations, select
Custom, then click on the Inputs tab to enable snapping for individual objects.

Applying a Trend
You can adjust an extent created from polylines, GIS data, points and structural data by
applying a trend to it. To do this, add the extent to the scene. Next, double-click on the extent in
the project tree and click the Trend tab.
Often the easiest way to apply a trend is to click on the Draw plane line button ( ) and draw a
plane line in the scene in the direction in which you wish to adjust the surface. You may need to
rotate the scene to see the plane properly.
The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.
l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line
on the moving plane.
l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.
Once you have adjusted the plane to represent the trend you wish to use, click the Set From
Plane button to copy the moving plane settings.
The Set to list contains a number of different options Leapfrog Geo has generated based on the
data used in the project. Isotropic is the default option used when the extent was created.
Settings made to other surfaces in the project will also be listed, which makes it easy to apply the
same settings to many surfaces.

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Click OK to apply the changes.

See Global Trends for more information.

Adding Data to an Extent

Extents created from polylines, GIS data, points and structural data can be modified by adding
points data objects, GIS vector data and structural data. Extents created from a distance to
points function can be modified by adding points data and GIS vector data. To add data to an
extent, right-click on the extent in the project tree and select the data type you wish to use from
the Add menu.
l Points data. Select from the points data objects available in the project and click OK.
l GIS vector data. Select from the GIS vector data available in the project and click OK.
l Structural data. Select from the structural data tables available in the project. If the selected
table has query filters defined, you can apply one of these filters by ticking Use query filter
and then selecting the required filter from the list. Click OK to add the selected data to the
extent. An alternative to adding an existing structural data table to an extent is to edit the
extent with structural data. This is described in Editing an Extent with Structural Data
below.
You can also add a polyline that already exists in the project. To do this, right-click on the extent
in the project tree and select Add > Polyline. You will be prompted to choose from the polylines
in the Polylines folder.

Editing an Extent with a Polyline

You can edit an extent using a polyline, which is described in Editing Surfaces with Polylines. A
polyline used to edit an extent will be added to the project tree as part of the extent. To edit the
polyline, right-click on it and select Edit Polyline or add it to the scene and click the Edit button (
) in the shape list. If you wish to remove the polyline from the extent, right-click on it in the
project tree and select Delete or Remove.
To add an existing polyline to a lateral extent, use the Add > Polyline option.

Editing an Extent with Structural Data

You can edit an extent using structural data, which is described in Editing Surfaces with
Structural Data. A structural data table will be added to the project tree as part of the extent.
To edit the table, right-click on it and select Edit In Scene or add it to the scene and click the
Edit button ( ) in the shape list. If you wish to remove the table from the extent, right-click on it
in the project tree and select Delete or Remove.

Removing an Extent from an Interpolant

If you have defined an extent and want to remove it from the interpolant, there are two options.
The first is to right-click on the extent in the project tree and click Delete. This deletes the extent
from the interpolant, but does not delete parent objects from the project unless they were

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created as part of the interpolant, e.g. a polyline used as a lateral extent but not shared within
the project. Use this option only if you are sure you do not want to use the extent.
The second method is useful if you are making changes to the extent and do not want to
recompute the interpolant with each change. Double-click on the interpolant’s Boundary
object or double-click on the interpolant and click on the Boundary tab. The Boundaries part
of the window lists all objects used as extents for the interpolant. Untick the box for extents to
temporarily disable them in the interpolant. The interpolant will be reprocessed, but you can
then work on the extent without reprocessing the interpolant. Disabled extents will be marked
as inactive in the project tree.

Changing the Settings for an RBF Interpolant

To change the settings for an RBF interpolant, you can either double-click on the interpolant in
the Numeric Models folder or right-click and select Open. When creating an RBF interpolant,
only a basic set of parameters is used. The Edit RBF Interpolant window provides finer controls
over these basic parameters so you can refine the interpolant to factor in real-world
observations and account for limitations in the data.
For a multi-domained RBF interpolant, these parameters can be changed for the parent
interpolant, and the trend, clipping, transformation and interpolation settings can be changed
for the sub-interpolants.

Adjusting the Values Used

The Values tab in the Edit Interpolant window shows the values used in creating the
interpolant and provides options for filtering the data. Although you cannot change the values
used to create an interpolant, you can filter the values using the Query filter and Surface filter
options.
You can adjust the values using a contour polyline or by adding points. Both options are
available by expanding the interpolant in the project tree, then right-clicking on the values
object:

These options are described below in Adding a Contour Polyline and Adding Points.
To apply a query filter, tick the Query filter box in the Values tab and select the available queries
from the list.
To change the object used as the Surface filter, select the required object from the list. Note
that the list contains an object that defines the interpolant’s own boundary, which can be
adjusted in the Boundary tab.

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Adding a Contour Polyline

Adding a contour polyline is a useful tool for manually adjusting a surface to make it more
geologically reasonable. To start adding a contour polyline, draw a slice where you wish to
adjust the surface and decide what value you will assign to the contour line. Next, right-click on
the values object and select New Contour Polyline. The next step is to choose whether you will
draw a new polyline or use one already in the project:

Only GIS lines, polylines imported into Leapfrog Geo or polylines created using the straight
line drawing tool can be used to create contour lines.

Enter the value to be used for the contour and a name for it. Click OK. If you have chosen the
New Drawing option, the new object will be created in the project tree and drawing tools will
appear in the scene. Start drawing in the scene as described in Drawing in the Scene. When
you have finished drawing, click the Save button ( ). The new contour will automatically be
added to the interpolant and will appear in the project tree as part of the interpolant’s values
object.
To change the value assigned to a contour polyline, double-click on the interpolant in the
project tree. In the Values tab, contour polylines and their assigned values are shown in the
User contour values table:

To change the value on a contour, click in the Value column and edit the entry.
To edit the polyline, right-click on it in the project tree and select Edit Polyline or add it to the
scene and click the Edit button ( ) in the shape list. If you wish to remove a contour polyline

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from the interpolant, right-click on it in the project tree and select Delete or Remove.

Adding Points
To add points to an RBF interpolant, right-click on the values object in the project tree and
select Add Values. Leapfrog Geo will display a list of all suitable points objects in the project.
Select an object and click OK.
A hyperlink to the points object will be added to the values object in the project tree. To remove
the points object, right-click on the points object and select Remove.

Compositing Parameters for an RBF Interpolant

When an RBF interpolant has been created from data that has not been composited,
compositing parameters can be changed by double-clicking on the interpolant in the project
tree, then clicking on the Compositing tab.

The Compositing tab will only appear for interpolants created from drillhole data that has
not been composited.

You can composite in the entire drillhole or only where the data falls inside the interpolant
boundary. See Numeric Composites for more information on the effects of the Compositing
length, For end lengths less than and Minimum coverage settings.

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Adjusting the Interpolant Boundary

See Modifying an RBF Interpolant’s Boundary with Lateral Extents above for information on
creating and working with lateral extents.
To change an RBF interpolant’s boundary, double-click on the interpolant in the project tree,
then click on the Boundary tab:

Controls to adjust the boundary will also appear in the scene.

Tick the Use Topography box to use the topography as a boundary. The topography is
normally not used as a boundary for interpolants and so this option is disabled when an
interpolant is first created.
The Boundaries list shows objects that have been used to modify the boundary. You can disable
any of these lateral extents by unticking the box.

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Lateral extents can be used to restrict modelling to a particular area of interest; for example,
modelling can be restricted to a known distance from drillholes by applying a distance function
as a lateral extent.

Clipping and Transforming Values for an RBF Interpolant

To clip data and apply a transformation to an RBF interpolant, double-click on the interpolant
in the project tree, then click on the Value Transform tab:

The options for Transform Type are None and Log. Log uses a natural logarithm to compress
the data values to a smaller range. This may be useful if the data range spans orders of
magnitude. The function used is:
ln(x+s)+c
where s is the Pre-log shift and c is a constant. In order to avoid issues with taking the logarithm
of zero or a negative number, Pre-log shift is a constant added to make the minimum value
positive. The value of the pre-log shift will automatically be chosen to add to the minimum
value in the data set to raise it to 0.001. This constant is then added to all the data samples. You
can modify the value of the Pre-log shift, as increasing this value further away from zero can be
used to reduce the effect of the natural logarithm transformation on the resultant isosurfaces.
Note that a further constant, c, is added to the natural logarithm of the data with the pre-log
shift added to it. If there are any negative numbers that result from taking the natural log of the
data, the absolute value of the most negative number is taken and added to all the transformed
data results. This will raise the value of all the data so the minimum data value is zero. The value
of c is chosen automatically and cannot be modified.

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Click on the Options button to change the histogram’s display, including the Bin Width.
If you tick the Do pre-transform clipping option, you can set the Lower bound and the Upper
bound to cap values that are too low or too high. For example, if you set the Upper bound from
14.00 to 10.00, grade values above 10.00 will be regarded as 10.00.

Changing the Trend for an RBF Interpolant

You can apply a global trend or a structural trend to an RBF interpolant. To do this, add the
interpolant to the scene, then double-click on the interpolant in the project tree. Click on the
Trend tab in the Edit RBF Interpolant window.
See:
l Using a Global Trend
l Using a Structural Trend

Using a Global Trend

The easiest way to change the trend applied to an interpolant is using a global trend set from
the moving plane.

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Click View Plane to add the moving plane to the scene, then click on the plane to view its
controls. You may need to hide part of the interpolant to click on the moving plane:

You can also use the Set to list to choose different options Leapfrog Geo has generated based
on the data used to build the interpolant. Isotropic is the default option used when the
interpolant is created.
The Ellipsoid Ratios determine the relative shape and strength of the ellipsoids in the scene,
where:
l The Maximum value is the relative strength in the direction of the green line on the moving
plane.
l The Intermed. value is the relative strength in the direction perpendicular to the green line
on the moving plane.
l The Minimum value is the relative strength in the direction orthogonal to the plane.
Click OK to regenerate the interpolant and view changes.

Using a Structural Trend

You can also set the trend for an RBF interpolant from a structural trend. First, you must create
or import the required mesh and create a structural trend. See Structural Trends for more
information.

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Once the structural trend has been created, add it to the interpolant by double-clicking on the
interpolant in the project tree, then clicking on the Trend tab. Select the Structural Trend
option, then select the required trend from the list:

Click OK. The trend will be added to the interpolant and will appear as part of the interpolant,
as shown:

When you apply a structural trend, you cannot use the Linear interpolant. See Interpolant
Functions for more information.
Once a structural trend has been defined for the interpolant, you can edit it by clicking on the
trend hyperlink in the project tree, then opening the structural trend applied to the interpolant.
The Structural Trend window will appear. See Structural Trends for information on the
settings in this screen.

The structural trend information included as part of the interpolant is a link to the original
structural trend. When you change the structural trend that is part of the interpolant, the
changes are also made for the original structural trend.

When a structural trend that is Strongest along meshes or Blending is used, the interpolant will
regress to the global mean trend away from the meshes. The global trend that will be used is set
in the Global Trend tab for the structural trend.

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Adjusting Interpolation Parameters

To adjust interpolation parameters for an RBF interpolant, double-click on the interpolant in the
project tree, then click on the Interpolant tab:

Two models are available, the spheroidal interpolant and the linear interpolant. See The
Spheroidal Interpolant Function and The Linear Interpolant Function for more information
on the settings in this tab.

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Output Settings for an RBF Interpolant

You can change the parameters used to generate RBF interpolant outputs by double-clicking
on the interpolant, then clicking on the Outputs tab.

The Evaluation limits apply when interpolants are evaluated against other objects in the
project. When the limits are enabled, all values outside the limits will be set to the Minimum and
Maximum.
When Exact clipping is enabled, the interpolant isosurface will be generated without “tags” that
overhang the interpolant boundary. This setting is enabled by default when you create an
interpolant.
To add a new isosurface, click the Add button and enter the required value. To delete an
isosurface, click on it in the list, then click the Remove button. You can also change the colours
used to display the isosurfaces by clicking on the colour chips.

If you find that grade shells are overlapping, the resolution may be too coarse. Set Default
resolution to a lower value or enable adaptive resolution in the Outputs tab. See Surface
Resolution in Leapfrog Geo.

Multi-Domained RBF Interpolants

This topic describes creating and editing multi-domained RBF interpolants:
l Creating a Multi-Domained RBF Interpolant
l Compositing and Filtering the Values Used
l Selecting Domains
l Clipping and Transforming Values

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l Setting the Trend

l Interpolation Parameters
l Output Options
l The Multi-Domained RBF Interpolant in the Project Tree
l Interpolant and Sub-Interpolant Display
l Sub-Interpolant Statistics
A multi-domained RBF interpolant is an RBF interpolant that has a number of individual sub-
interpolants bounded by the domains of a geological model.
l Changes to all sub-interpolants can be made by editing the parent interpolant.
l Sub-interpolants can be edited to account for local influences on the values used, the trend
and interpolation parameters.
A multi-domained RBF interpolant is a single object that can be evaluated as a single column on
points and block models.

Creating a Multi-Domained RBF Interpolant

Creating a multi-domained RBF interpolant is a two-step process:
l Selecting the values to be used and the domains in which sub-interpolants will be created.
l Setting the multi-domained RBF interpolant’s properties.
To start creating a multi-domained RBF interpolant, right-click on the Numeric Models folder
and select New Multi Domained RBF Interpolant. The New Multi-domained RBF Interpolant
window will be displayed:

In this window, select the basic parameters for the multi-domained RBF interpolant. You will be
able to set additional properties once you click OK.
l Select the Values To Interpolate from the suitable data available in the project. You will be
able to change how data is filtered at the next step, but you will not be able to change the

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