The term “Implicit modeling” was introduced into the minerals industry by Jun-Cowan in a paper written in 2003 which is available from the Orefind website. Before that paper, it was only described in the computer graphics literature. However it has a very specific definition.
First of all the defiiniton of explicit modelling. Explicit modelling is basically a method to explicitly define all shape nodes whether this is done bay hand (usually) or using a computer algorithm.
Implicit modelling on the other hand involves forming a mathematical expression (a function) of the data first and saving this on the computer. Wireframe and block models are then generated by interrogating this function. The formulation of this mathematical function (e.g. Kriging, RBF, or 3D spline) is essential in the implicit modelling methodology.
