GuideMia Clear Aligner Cookbook — Clinic Edition

Purpose of This Cookbook

This cookbook provides dental clinics and orthodontic practices with a practical, repeatable digital clear aligner workflow built on the GuideMia software ecosystem, helping clinics achieve everything from chairside planning to in-house fabrication and efficient collaboration with dental laboratories.

It is intended for those who wish to:

• Complete chairside visualization of a treatment plan within minutes
• Rapidly fabricate the first aligners in-house to improve efficiency and patient experience
• Collaborate seamlessly with dental laboratories
• Achieve secure, scalable case management across a multi-operatory environment
• Flexibly outsource design even when staffing is tight

Objectives

By following this cookbook, a clinic will be able to:

1. Visualize a clear aligner treatment plan chairside, in the same appointment
2. Fabricate the first aligners in-house, without booking a second visit just to set them up
3. Build a flexible hybrid workflow model
4. Centrally manage all case data, communication, and sharing

GuideMia Software Ecosystem (Clinic Configuration)

GuideMia OrthoClic – Chairside Planning and Visualization

Fast, interactive orthodontic simulation at the chairside: open a case and produce a 3D visualization within minutes, display tooth movement in real time, with patient-friendly animations and step-by-step presentations.

Ideal for initial consultation, treatment plan explanation, and case conversion and acceptance.

Value to the clinic: turns treatment planning into a communication and marketing tool, significantly increases patient acceptance rates, and reduces preliminary back-and-forth with the laboratory.

GuideMia OrthoPlus – Full-Workflow Aligner Planning and Design

A comprehensive platform for clear aligner planning, staging, and appliance design, including automatic and semi-automatic tooth segmentation, tooth setup tools, staging control, and attachment design.

Supports aligner output: model-based thermoforming. Direct-print aligner design, automatic trim-path generation and retainer design are OrthoPlus Enterprise capabilities; CBCT and facial-scan input starts at OrthoPlus Studio.

Value to the clinic: supports a complete in-house design workflow while remaining compatible with both traditional manufacturing and next-generation direct-printing processes.

Cympha – Case Management, File Sharing, and Communication

app.cympha.com is the Virtual Lab in which a clinic runs its digital operations: secure case organization and storage, upload and sharing of files such as STL/PLY/CBCT, workflow tracking and status visibility, an append-only case event history spanning 22 kinds of event, and the case conversation between doctors and assistants. Access follows a fixed role catalogue — each person chooses their role once at signup — plus read-only shares for colleagues, who can view a case but never write to it.

Value to the clinic: every case becomes a Living Case rather than a pile of files. Its 3D data, the Timeline of what actually happened, the Dialogue around it, the clinical Intent behind it and the People involved all stay attached to the patient — which is what makes collaboration with laboratories, design partners and patients dependable months later.

The GuideMia family of design software (OrthoClic, OrthoPlus, Implant Master, and others) is subscribed through gm.cympha.com and is directly connected to Cympha, delivering a complete closed loop from case intake to plan delivery.

Cympha Studio – In-Browser 3D Viewing and Sharing

studio.cympha.com provides a browser-based dental 3D viewer: interactive 3D model viewing, patient-facing treatment plan presentations, and rapid review and annotation by doctors.

Value to the clinic: share a 3D treatment plan with patients or collaborating doctors via a secure link, which the recipient can open without installing any software.

Addressing the Core Pain Points of Clinics

Scan Data Processing and Repair

Pain point: Intraoral scan data often contains holes, overlaps, artifacts, gingival-margin distortion, or missing regions; the traditional repair process is time-consuming and has a high technical barrier.

GuideMia solution: All-in-one automatic repair + AI segmentation, including automatic mesh repair (hole filling, noise removal, surface smoothing), intelligent handling of common scanning artifacts, and AI-based tooth segmentation.

Result for the clinic: steps that previously required extensive manual processing become a one-click automated workflow.

Tooth Setup: Primarily Automatic, with Minor Refinement

Pain point: Traditional tooth setup is considered technically complex and time-consuming, often requiring specialized design staff.

GuideMia solution: Intelligent automation + intuitive refinement, performing automatic initial setup based on occlusal relationships, arch form, and treatment objectives, with intuitive manual fine-tuning tools.

Result for the clinic: tooth setup becomes fast, predictable, and easy to perform.

Staging and Attachment Design: Fully Automatic

Pain point: Staging logic and attachment placement are generally considered complex and technical, posing a high risk for in-house operation.

GuideMia solution: One-click automation that automatically generates staging and attachment design, with the doctor retaining final control.

Result for the clinic: no manual staging spreadsheets are needed; the system handles the engineering calculations while the doctor focuses on clinical judgment.

Support for Complex Orthodontic Scenarios

GuideMia OrthoPlus supports extraction cases, implant-assisted orthodontics, occlusal adjustment, and complex staging strategies.

Result for the clinic: GuideMia is suitable not only for aesthetic alignment but also for genuine orthodontic treatment planning.

Automatic Model and Aligner Generation (No Post-Processing)

Pain point: Even after treatment planning is complete, many systems still require time-consuming CAD cleanup and manual post-processing.

GuideMia solution: Arch models are generated automatically from the treatment plan, requiring no manual post-processing. Direct-print aligner geometry is produced the same way on the OrthoPlus Enterprise tier.

Result for the clinic: moving from treatment plan to production-ready files requires only a single automated output step.

Workflow: From Scan to Design Files

Data Import

Point the Cympha Agent at the folders your scanner writes to: files that appear after monitoring starts are detected within seconds and listed under New files detected, where you choose Create a Case or Ignore. With Cloud Monitoring on, each case has its own folder on disk — design output dropped there (.zip and .gvw) uploads on its own, while everything else waits in the Cloud Monitor panel for Upload or Upload all, so nothing leaves the clinic unchecked and nothing has to be copied by hand.

Chairside Planning (OrthoClic)

1. Load scan data (automatically detected)
2. Automatic scan repair + AI segmentation
3. Automatic tooth setup
4. Real-time simulation of treatment stages
5. Patient-facing 3D visualization

Result: a professional, interactive treatment presentation completed while the patient is still in the chair.

Plan Refinement (OrthoPlus)

Import the chairside-confirmed plan into OrthoPlus and, when necessary, fine-tune tooth positions using intuitive tools.

Key advantage: staging can be re-planned from any step without starting the case over. If the teeth have drifted past the plan and a fresh scan no longer fits the original setup, the dedicated mid-treatment Case Restart page handles it — an OrthoPlus Enterprise feature.

Automatic Staging and Attachments

Generate automatic staging with a single click, intelligently distribute movement, and automatically generate optimal attachment designs.

Model and Aligner Design and Output

Automatically generate arch models for thermoforming — and, on the OrthoPlus Enterprise tier, directly printable aligner geometry — outputting manufacturing-ready files straight from the treatment plan, with no manual post-processing required.

Operational flexibility:

1. Export models or aligners for any stage as needed
2. Regenerate manufacturing files at any time when the plan is updated
3. After treatment is complete, design retainers from the final tooth positions (OrthoPlus Enterprise)

Multi-Operatory Clinic Configuration

Deploy OrthoClic in each operatory together with a central OrthoPlus: each operatory conducts chairside consultations, plan design and fabrication are centralized, and data is synchronized through Cympha. OrthoPlus is a Windows desktop licence with one active machine per user per product, so the design seat stays in one place; every operatory reaches the same case, files and history through Cympha in the browser, and the activation can be transferred to a new machine from the account page when the design seat has to move.

Communication and Collaboration

• Internal workflow – Cympha, the People and Dialogue dimensions of a Living Case. A secure case repository and file sharing, where doctors, assistants, and technicians work from the same record: files, case chat, and an append-only event history covering creation, status changes, assignment, file and label changes, comments, and approvals.
• External laboratories and design partners. Share scan data, treatment plans, and STL/PLY models directly through Cympha, and conduct 3D review via a Cympha Studio link that the recipient can open without installing any software. A colleague share goes out by email and is read-only: the recipient sees the case and its files but cannot upload.

Outsourcing Support During Busy Periods

When the in-house workload is high, design can be outsourced without the case ever leaving Cympha. The clinic keeps control of fabrication — and the laboratory gains just as much, because it receives the scans, the clinical intent and the whole case history in one place instead of an email thread, and can start without a round of clarifying questions. The lab stays a partner in the case rather than being cut out of it.

Fabrication Methods

• Model-based thermoforming: Design → print models → thermoform → trim.
• Direct 3D printing of aligners: Design → print aligners → post-process.
• GuideMia equipment and workflow consulting: print equipment selection, material configuration, and workflow optimization.

Example: First Aligners the Same Day

1. Scan the patient
2. Automatic repair + AI segmentation
3. Automatic setup, staging, and attachments
4. Review the plan chairside
5. Print the first-stage models or aligners
6. Deliver the same day or at the next visit

Starting treatment while the patient is still in the chair changes what a practice can offer — and it is the kind of visit a team takes pride in.

Summary

By eliminating traditional bottlenecks, GuideMia fundamentally transforms the way clinics produce clear aligners: scan repair (all-in-one automated processing), tooth segmentation (AI-driven, fast and reliable), tooth setup (primarily automatic, with simple refinement), staging and attachments (fully automatic), and advanced orthodontics (supporting complex treatments such as extractions, implants, miniscrews, and bite jumps).

Clinics gain chairside visualization the patient can follow, in-house aligner fabrication without booking a second visit to set it up, scalable collaboration with laboratories and design services, and a case record — files, chat, and a complete event history — that holds up when a plan is questioned months later. That is what buys peace of mind, and what a clinic can show a patient with pride.