Joint Generation
The geometry of Measured Joints and Synthetic Joints in RocSlope3 are idealized as planar, circular discs. The circle circumference is discretized into equal linear segments starting at a specific angle of rotation, forming a closed polygon. The more segments, the closer the approximation to a circular disc. The Number of Discretizations can be specified in the Advanced tab of Project Settings and apply to all Measured Joints and Synthetic Joints in the model.
Increasing the Number of Discretizations forming Measured and/or Synthetic Joints may affect the performance of Compute Blocks since more mesh triangles are required to define the geometry of the joints. More joint mesh elements imply that more memory is required to store the meshes and more computational effort is required to find and resolve mesh-mesh intersections and adjacencies, which are essential steps in creating cut volumes and mapping joints to blocks.
Joint Definition
For any given Measured Joint or Synthetic Joint:
- The orientation is defined by the Dip and Dip Direction.
- The size is defined by the Radius (the joint polygon inscribes a circle with the specified radius).
- The center of the joint polygon is defined by the Location which is a 3D point (X, Y, Z).
Synthetic Joint Definition
Unlike a Measured Joint, a Synthetic Joint's Location is not explicitly input by the user. The Location of a Synthetic Joint depends on the Traverse path, and the Spacing and Spacing Option defined in the Define Synthetic Joints dialog.
- The orientation is defined by the Dip and Dip Direction (which may vary for each Synthetic Joint in a Synthetic Joint Set if sampled statistically).
- The size is defined by the Radius (the joint polygon inscribes a circle with the specified radius) (which may vary for each Synthetic Joint in a Synthetic Joint Set if sampled statistically).
- The center of the joint polygon is on the Traverse and spaced according the defined Spacing (which may vary for each Synthetic Joint in a Synthetic Joint Set if sampled statistically) and the Spacing Option.