kirra-docs

Kirra — Help & User Guide

Welcome to the official documentation for Kirra, a web-based blasting pattern design application developed by Brent Buffham for the mining, quarrying, and construction industries.

🔍 Search the docs — or type in the search box at the top of any page.

I want to…

I want to	Start here
Learn Kirra on a first blast, click by click	Your First Blast
Plan a shot from an empty workspace to a printed plan	Plan a Shot, Start to Finish
Get a survey pickup or design surface ready to design on	Prepare a Surface for Design
Review a blast before it is signed off	Check a Blast Before Firing
Bring in a design from other software or a drill rig	Bring In a Design from Another System
Record what was drilled and loaded, and re-fit the charging	After Drilling and Charging
Design underground: a development round on a face, or an uphole ring	Design Underground Rings and Drives on a Section Plane
Back up a job, or move it to another computer	Starting, Saving & Projects
Find a file format	Supported File Formats

Products

Product	Description
Kirra Design	The core blast design application — 2D/3D pattern layout, hole management, surface tools, charging, timing, 20+ import/export formats, blast analytics, and flyrock modelling
Kirra Scheduler	A companion scheduling tool for planning and sequencing blast events with Gantt charts, equipment management, and 3D playback

Kirra App Presentation ISEE April 2026

Release Notes

Release Notes — what changed in each version, newest first

Kirra Design

Getting Started

Working in Kirra

Starting, Saving & Projects — the start-up prompts, how work is saved, KAP / KAT projects, Record Actuals
Workspaces — ten separate stores; open, name and clear them
Data Explorer — the tree: show, hide, lock, select, and every right-click item
Display Options — the 31 label buttons and their right-click settings
Selection & Snapping — H / K / V, shapes, modifier keys, snap targets
Views & Navigation — 2D and 3D, mouse controls, toolbars
Settings — theme, language, and every Settings field with its default

Task Guides

Plan a Shot, Start to Finish — template, pattern, ground, charge, tie, check, print, export
Prepare a Surface for Design — import, repair, trim, contour and assign heights
Check a Blast Before Firing — positions, rows, timing, powder factor, vibration, flyrock
Bring In a Design from Another System — import, check, fix rows and numbering, send on
After Drilling and Charging — record actuals, re-fit charging, hand back the as-built
Design Underground Rings and Drives on a Section Plane — development round on a face, uphole ring, charging upholes

Surfaces

Surfaces Toolbar — every surface button and its extra methods
- Build: Triangulate · Extrude KAD to Solid · Contour Surface
- Combine: Which Boolean? · Solid Boolean · Trimesh Boolean · Surface Intersection
- Cut and repair: Clip Surface · Solid Horizon Slice · Clean Mesh · Mesh Editing
Importing Surfaces
Point Clouds — LAS and text clouds: import, the Point Clouds folder, Cloud Properties, printing, LAS export and KAP
Surface Gradients
Compare Surfaces — design vs survey deviation heat map

Geology — Block Models

Importing Block Models — Datamine, Vulcan CSV and BMF, Micromine
The Load Block Model Dialog — colour, bench slices, cut-offs and limits
Export a Section and Build Solids — CSV sections and one closed solid per class

Blast Analytics

Analyse Toolbar — every button, and which tool answers which question
Voronoi Cells — powder factor, mass, timing and more, hole by hole
PPV Voronoi Modes (A – F) — vibration per hole against your monitors
Monitor Points & Seed Library
Site Law Regression — fit K and B from monitoring records
CRS Library — your site’s coordinate systems, for every import and export
Blast Analysis Shader — vibration, damage and pressure models over the ground
PPV & Vibration Models — every shader model’s settings
Time Window Dialog — IDI, Spectrum, Synthesis, Forward Array, Detune, Constrain
Blast Animation
Blast Quality — attribute distributions and row-assignment checks
Flyrock Modelling
Blast Statistics & Voronoi

Printing

Print from Template (XLSX) — the PDF Print dialog, Kirra Inbuilt and your own templates
Print Formula Reference — cells, aggregation, maps, legends
Template Examples — worked XLSX templates for advanced print formulas
Example Template Downloads — the downloadable XLSX example files
Claude Print Template Skill — Install & Use — optional AI helper for building templates; download

Importing Data

The Import Dialog — every format, drag and drop, and the checks on import
CSV Import — Kirra’s hole CSVs, Custom CSV and Measured Data
Blast Design Formats — CBLAST, ShotPlus, Davey BPD, DetNet, Paradigm Terra
DXF Import
Surpac STR / DTM — holes, strings and surfaces
Other CAD Formats — Geometry CSV, DWG, Vulcan, Micromine, Deswik, 12d
3D Mesh (OBJ / GLTF / GLB)
Surfaces and Point Clouds — GeoTIFF, point clouds, LAS, Vulcan .00t, Datamine
ECW Imagery: import, full detail on zoom, transparency and resampling, clip, reconnect, image statistics
Transform (Reproject) Import
Other Formats — Kirra files, telemetry, Epiroc, Wenco, KML, Shapefile, legacy

Exporting Data

KAD Drawing Tools

KAD Toolbar — every drawing button and its extra methods
Drawing Basics — finish, undo, layers, height and snapping
Points, Lines, Polygons and Circles — including placement modes
KAD Text · Roads and Ramps
Modify Toolbar — every editing button and its extra methods
- Holes: Move · Hole Bearing · Assign Surface and Assign Grade
- Shapes: Transform · Offset · Radii · Router-Chamfer · Reorder Points
- Cut and combine: Clip-KAD · KAD Boolean · Join and Split
- Lines: Extend Line · Grade Line · Simplify RDP · Snap Objects to Surface
Drawing Points, Lines, and Polygons — entity types, properties and statistics
Extrude, Boolean, and Section Plane
Layer Organisation — where generated output lands and how it is named

Formula Engine

Formula Engine Overview — three fx: engines (charging, print, blast group); when to use which
Blast Group Formulas — Assign Group predicates (boolean)
Claude Formula Skill — Install & Use — optional AI helper; download zip
Charging formulas: Deck Builder Formula Guide (under Charging) · Print formulas: Print Formula Reference (under Printing)

Reference

Select Toolbar — button-by-button reference
Supported File Formats — full import/export matrix
Hole Properties
Coordinate System
3D View & Orbit Focus
Section Views — Section Plane, Hole Section View and the Deck Builder section
Keyboard Shortcuts & Mouse Controls
Blasting Glossary — Kirra in Every Language — the blasting terms in all eight language editions
JavaScript pitfalls — zero vs falsy & import zoom (contributors)
FAQ

Kirra Scheduler

Documentation freshness

These guides were checked against the Kirra Design source tree at:

Field	Value
Kirra app version	1.1.32.358
Git commit	`d723d9f2`
Commit date	2026-10-13 (author timezone +0800)
Coverage	52 of 52 import/export formats · 83 of 83 toolbar tools

The coverage figures come from an automated check that builds its checklist from the source itself — every registered file format and every toolbar button — and then looks for each one by name across these pages.

Read it for what it is: a presence check. It tells you whether a feature is documented at all. It does not promise that a page which exists has kept up with the latest behaviour.

Use this block to judge whether the docs may be ahead of or behind your installed build. The version you are running is shown in the title of the welcome dialog that opens when Kirra starts (for example Kirra - v1.1.32.358).

About

About Kirra & Licensing

Kirra Licence v1.0 — Kirra Design is free for mining, quarrying, construction, and research use. Commercial software integration requires written permission from Brent Buffham. See About for details.