The design of mine openings and the assessment of their reserve are processes ihicl, require the routine manipulation of considerable amounts of data. A number of computer programs have been assembled to operate in a mini computer in order to provide some mechanical assistance for these processes._x000D_
The system responds to plain language commands._x000D_
which allows mining engineers to compute the reserves for a number of possible mining outlines, on an interactive basis. Methods of numerical analysis were used in preference to statistical or qeostatistical techniques.