Rock blasting is often considered to be still an art performed by only a few good experts. Numerical simulations are one of the means considered to help them. However, many aspects of such numerical simulations need to be improved such as the explosive model, the rock’s response and of course, their coupling. This paper provides a review of blasting simulations. Some development are presented, especially in the rock damage model. It is also shown that an optimal design of blasting can be reached thanks to automatic learning techniques coupled to optimization tools which are discussed.