Early Exploration: Using the Implicit Modelling Tools to Create Faults from Surface Measurements

During early exploration, you don't usually have much subsurface information to work with. Maybe you have a surficial geology map and some fault measurements taken on a prospecting survey. You can generate fault surfaces from that data and use it to inform future exploration tasks.

Here's an example of some starting data. We have a plan map, some polylines representing several faults, and structural discs in an .MMSTRUCT file.

Our structural data is coded with the fault name and has dip/dip direction measurements. Keep in mind that if you want to use data recorded as strike and dip, you will have to convert it to dip/dip direction. Take a look at this other Knowledge Base Article for some tips.

We're going to open the Implicit Modeller > Fault tool and use our structural measurements as the input data. I'm going to run this tool twice, filtering the input data for Fault 1 and then Fault 2.

Make sure your modeled area extents are large enough to cover your planned exploration area. 

I'm setting up Fault 1 in orange and Fault 2 will be green.

Here are the results! You can get a great approximate fault plane from just a few surface measurements with the Implicit Modeller.