ClearAligner.AI: A Solo Doctor's Direct Path to AI-Designed Aligners

Most clear-aligner workflows assume there's a lab on the other end. The doctor scans, fills in a referral form, ships the case to a lab, the lab assigns a designer, the designer drives OrthoPlus, the lab sends back a review file, the doctor approves, the lab bills. Every hand-off is somewhere the case can sit and wait. Per-case prices set by whoever's quoting.

ClearAligner.AI gives a solo clinician their own Virtual Lab: the design capacity of a lab, with no lab to manage. A clinician — or a small practice that doesn't want to run a lab relationship — submits an aligner case at clearaligner.ai, the AI runs the same OrthoPlus pipeline that any lab's designer would run, and the doctor downloads the design themselves.

One credit per case. Phase-1 review is free. Every revision on the same case is free. No software license, no lab onboarding, no minimum volume.

This cookbook walks through what's there.

Who this is for

ClearAligner.AI is the right tool for a clinic that:

Wants to offer clear-aligner treatment but doesn't have a lab partner they trust (or pay).
Already does some aligner design in-house but wants to offload the repetitive Phase-1 work — scan repair, segmentation, initial staging — so their senior designer's time goes to refinement only.
Doesn't want to license and run an OrthoPlus seat of their own, but does want OrthoPlus-grade output.
Runs few enough aligner cases per month (one a week, five a month, twenty a year) that a per-case price beats a subscription.

It's the same AlignerBot engine the labs run on Cympha — same scan repair, same segmentation, same staging, same attachment generation. The difference is who submits and how they're billed.

How it differs from AlignerBot

AlignerBot is the lab-side product. A dental lab installs the Cympha Agent Manager on a workstation in their shop, pairs it with their lab's Cympha account, and accepts aligner cases from doctors who chose that lab. The lab keeps the doctor relationship, the margin, the brand.

ClearAligner.AI is the consumer-facing surface of the same pipeline. There's no lab. The doctor signs up directly at clearaligner.ai, submits, pays per case, and downloads the design themselves. We — Cympha and GuideMia — operate the OrthoPlus workstations centrally. The doctor never touches the workstation, never installs anything, never has to know the underlying engine is OrthoPlus.

Same engine. Different entry point. Different billing model.

If you're a lab reading this: AlignerBot is what you want. Run your own workstation, accept cases from your existing doctors, set your own prices, keep 100% of the margin minus Cympha's platform fee.

If you're a doctor reading this and you don't want to be a lab: ClearAligner.AI is what you want. One credit per case, no relationships to manage, no workstation to run.

Setup — nothing to install

You don't install anything. The whole workflow runs in your browser.

Go to clearaligner.ai. The landing page redirects to app.cympha.com/caai — same app, scoped surface.
Sign up. Email + password, or Google. The first time you submit a case, we'll ask for billing details for the per-case credits; you don't need them to browse the splash page or start drafting a case.
Buy your first credit (or wait until you have a real case). Credits live in your account under the Credits menu. Packs are 1, 5, or 10 — bulk packs save per credit. Stripe Checkout handles the payment; your balance updates the moment the webhook fires.

That's it. No download, no plugin, no role selection, no lab onboarding flow.

The case flow

Submitting a case is one page.

Patient demographics. Name, optionally date of birth and gender. We don't ask for more than what the lab slip needs.
Scans. Drop the upper and lower arch STL files from your scanner export. We accept any STL — 3Shape, Medit, iTero, anything that writes a watertight mesh.
Treatment plan. A single page of controls. Protraction / retraction, distalization, expansion, mid-line correction, intrusion / extrusion, IPR, attachments. Same controls a designer driving OrthoPlus would see, structured for one-page submission.
What you want. Aligner model (the default, with shells per step), arch model (just the per-step planned arch geometry), or bracket / guide outputs.
Submit. The case lands in your dashboard. Status: Submitted.

Phase-1 planning is dispatched to the central workstation the moment you submit — there is no designer queue to wait behind. How long it takes depends on case complexity and how busy the workstation is; you get a notification when it's ready, so you can close the tab and get on with your day.

Phase-1 — the free review

This is the part most doctors don't realize they want until they have it: Phase-1 is free. You see the AI's proposed staging before you commit to paying anything.

Open the case in your dashboard. You'll see:

A <patient>AlignerBot.gvw file attached — the per-step review file.
The design-revision history (this is your first one, so just rev 0).
Self-approve and run aligner design to commit, or Request changes, which takes you to the Cympha approve page and asks for a structured revision artifact — an XML tooth-position file exported from Cympha Studio's 3D review, or a .gos.gpk transfer pack saved from GuideMia OrthoPlus Planner.

To review, click the .gvw to open it in Cympha Studio — browser-based, no install. Step through the planned movements. Check the IPR placement. Look at the proposed attachments. Cympha Studio is where you view and mark up the plan; the decision itself is recorded back on the case in Cympha. Everything the review needs is in the browser — nothing to install, nothing to sync to a local folder.

If the plan is wrong, you have two options:

Quick text adjustment. Update the treatment-plan controls (more retraction, different IPR scheme) and hit Re-run. New Phase-1, still free.
XML overlay. Open the case in OrthoPlus Studio (if you have it) or any tool that exports a tooth-position XML, drop the XML on the case, hit Re-run. The agent picks up the overlay and the next dispatch uses it as the starting point.

You can iterate as many times as you want on Phase-1. Cost is zero. Only when you click Self-approve does the credit get deducted.

Phase-2 — the paid appliance design

Self-approve dispatches the full appliance design. One credit goes from your wallet into a transaction tagged to this case. From then on, this case is "paid for life" — every Re-run, every revision, every download is free.

Phase-2 produces the per-step aligner shells (or the arch model, depending on what you selected). Output is a zip file: <patient>_rev1_<from>-<to>_DesignResults.zip containing one STL per step.

Download from your case page. Print, mill, or send to whatever aligner-fabrication partner you use. The intellectual property is yours; we don't keep a copy on a marketing list, we don't anonymize and resell, we don't share with anyone.

Revisions — free, unlimited, structured

After you've paid for a case, you can Re-run as many times as you need without paying again.

The three revision paths:

Update controls + Re-run. Tweak any of the treatment-plan inputs (different staging, more steps, different attachment positions), hit Re-run. New dispatch, new output zip.
XML overlay. Open the design in OrthoPlus Studio, move a tooth, export the tooth-position XML, drop on the case, Re-run. Most precise way to make a small correction.
Transfer pack. Less common — if you've made substantial edits in OrthoPlus locally, save a .gos.gpk transfer pack and upload it to the case, then Re-run design. The case keeps its own project file as the canonical source; the pack carries your edits into the next pass.

Each Re-run produces a new revision zip (<patient>_rev2_..._DesignResults.zip, _rev3_, …) and the design history on the case keeps them all. You can download any prior revision later.

What you don't have to deal with

The mental load of a traditional aligner workflow that ClearAligner.AI deletes:

No lab partner negotiation. No per-case price quote, no minimum-volume contract, no relationship management.
No software license. OrthoPlus runs on our central workstation. You don't install anything.
No designer queue. Phase-1 dispatch is automatic; the workstation picks it up the moment you submit.
No file shipping. The scans go up at submit. The design comes down at approve. Everything in between is in the browser.
No surprise pricing. One credit per case, fixed. The 5-pack is cheaper per credit; the 10-pack is cheapest. No per-revision fee.

What you keep:

Clinical judgment. Phase-1 review, XML overlays, Re-runs — you steer the design, the AI handles the labor.
IP ownership. The case is yours. The patient data is yours. The output is yours.
Peace of mind. Phase-1 costs nothing, so you never commit money to a plan you haven't seen. Every action on the case is written to an append-only event log you can read back at any time.
Pride. The plan that reaches your patient is one you stepped through and signed off yourself.

When ClearAligner.AI isn't the right fit

A few cases where AlignerBot (the lab-side product) makes more sense:

You're a lab planning to offer aligner work to your existing roster of doctors. You want to keep the relationship and the margin.
You do enough volume that running and staffing your own workstation is worth it.
You want to integrate aligner design into a broader lab workflow that includes crowns, surgical guides, custom appliances, etc.

In those cases, run AlignerBot on your own workstation: /alignerbot.

What to do next

If you're a doctor who's been wanting to offer clear-aligner treatment without the lab overhead:

Visit clearaligner.ai.
Submit a case. The first Phase-1 review costs nothing.
Decide if the plan is what you want. If yes, one credit and the design is yours.

There has never been a path from "I want to design an aligner case" to "I have the design" that doesn't pass through a lab or a software seat of your own. ClearAligner.AI is that path.

Open ClearAligner.AI at clearaligner.ai (redirects to app.cympha.com/caai). For the lab-side version, see the AlignerBot product page or Cookbook #7 — Launch Your Automatic Aligner Design in Minutes.