Set up AlignerBot for your lab

This setup adds AI clear aligner design with AlignerBot to an existing Cympha lab: an OrthoPlus subscription, an activated workstation, a paired Agent Manager and a first test case.

Audience: A lab manager who already has a Cympha lab (or is creating one today) and wants to add AlignerBot — Cympha's AI aligner-design service — to the services your lab offers.

You'll come away knowing: what you need beyond a basic Cympha account, how to subscribe to OrthoPlus on gm.cympha.com, activate it on a workstation, install and pair the Cympha Agent Manager, and run one test case through AlignerBot end-to-end.

Time required: One uninterrupted sitting if everything goes smoothly. Most of it is the OrthoPlus installer and checkout.

What "setting up AlignerBot" actually means

AlignerBot is the only Cympha workflow that needs a paid GuideMia subscription and a desktop workstation in your lab. Every other Cympha workflow (running a clinic, sending cases to a lab, taking cases from clinicians, sharing plans with patients, Ortho Monitoring) is free to sign up for and runs entirely in the browser.

So if all you wanted was a Cympha lab account to take clinician cases, you do not need any of this. See What do you need? to confirm.

If you want AlignerBot specifically, three pieces have to be in place:

A Cympha lab account as Lab Manager (free).
A GuideMia OrthoPlus subscription on gm.cympha.com (paid — this is the design engine).
A Cympha Agent Manager installed and paired on a Windows workstation (free; bridges OrthoPlus and Cympha).

The rest of this doc walks each piece.

Before you start

Have these ready:

A Windows workstation for the lab. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, with local admin rights. OrthoPlus and the Cympha Agent Manager are both Windows-only.
A credit card. For the OrthoPlus subscription on gm.cympha.com. The Cympha lab account itself is free; only the desktop design engine is subscription.
A Cympha lab account. If you don't have one yet, follow Onboard your lab on Cympha first, then come back here.
Uninterrupted time. You can pause between sections, but you'll want to stay at the same workstation from Step 3 onward.

Step 1 — Confirm the AlignerBot service is active on your lab

Sign into app.cympha.com as your Lab Manager. Open My Lab → Services. Every new lab starts with three services already attached and active — including AlignerBot Planning — so in most cases there is nothing to enable. If it was deactivated at some point, reactivate it from the service row.

An active AlignerBot Planning service is visible to clinicians who search your lab on /cases/new and lets them submit AlignerBot cases against you. Submissions arrive regardless of whether you've finished the workstation setup — but they'll sit at Submitted (or with a human designer) with nothing auto-dispatching until Steps 2–5 are done.

Step 2 — Subscribe to OrthoPlus on `gm.cympha.com`

Go to gm.cympha.com and sign in with the same Cympha account. GuideMia and Cympha share authentication; you don't sign up twice.

On the products page, click OrthoPlus. You'll see three tiers — Starter, Studio, Enterprise, in that order, with Studio carrying the Popular badge. Pick the tier and billing interval that fit the case volume you expect. You can manage the subscription later from /account. Click Subscribe and complete the secure checkout.

After checkout you return to gm.cympha.com/account. Your new subscription shows with status Active.

Why a separate subscription. OrthoPlus is the desktop design engine — the actual software that opens 3D scans, stages tooth movements, and computes aligner geometry. Cympha (the cloud workflow) is free; the design engine is what you pay for. Each activation code activates one machine, so plan for the number of workstations you'll run.

Step 3 — Generate an activation code

Still on /account at gm.cympha.com, find your OrthoPlus subscription row and click Generate activation code. A code appears on screen (OrthoPlus codes start with ORT-). The code is valid for 10 minutes and activates one machine — once a desktop activates with it, the code is dead. It's shown exactly once, so use it right away.

If the code expires before you finish installing, come back to /account and generate a new one. The old one stays dead, but it doesn't cost you anything.

Leave this browser tab open — you'll paste the code in a moment.

Step 4 — Install and activate OrthoPlus

On /account (or from app.cympha.com/downloads), click Download OrthoPlus for Windows. Save the installer and run it. Windows SmartScreen may show a "Windows protected your PC" warning on first run — click More info → Run anyway after you check the publisher.

Defaults are fine. Finish the installer and launch OrthoPlus.

When OrthoPlus asks for activation, paste your activation code from Step 3 and activate. Within a few seconds OrthoPlus verifies the code online and unlocks on this machine. The code is now spent.

If you see "No subscription found" or "Invalid or expired code" — your code expired. Go back to /account and generate a new one.

Step 5 — Install and pair the Cympha Agent Manager

OrthoPlus on its own runs locally. The Cympha Agent Manager is the bridge that downloads a Cympha case onto this workstation, launches OrthoPlus on it, and uploads the result back. Without it, you'd be manually copying files between your browser and your desktop.

Go to app.cympha.com/downloads and click Download on the Cympha Agent Manager card. Run the installer; defaults are correct. The agent starts automatically on Windows login from then on.

After install, a small Cympha icon appears in your system tray. Right-click it → Pair to Cympha…. Type your Cympha account email in the dialog and click Send pair request. Switch to your already signed-in browser at app.cympha.com — a modal titled "Cympha Agent pair request" pops up over whatever page you're on. Confirm the machine name matches your workstation and click Approve. The agent picks the approval up within a few seconds and shows as paired.

One more click while you're in the tray: Cloud Monitoring ▸ → Configure workspace…. The workspace shows (not set) until you choose a folder — pick where incoming Cympha cases should land on this machine. Choosing the folder starts cloud monitoring automatically.

The full walkthrough, including what failure looks like at each step, is at Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager.

Step 6 — Add an AlignerBot seat to your team

For an AlignerBot case to dispatch, the workstation that should run it must belong to a team member who holds the AlignerBot seat. The Agent Manager polls Cympha on behalf of its paired account, so the paired user has to be the user the case is assigned to.

Team joining on Cympha is initiated by the staff member, not by an invite from the lab: the person who will operate the AlignerBot workstation signs up at app.cympha.com/sign-up, picks GuideMia AlignerBot on the Select Your Role screen, and enters your (the lab manager's) email when prompted. Their request then appears on your My Team page, where you click Approve. They pair the Agent Manager on their workstation to their own account.

Without at least one AlignerBot-seat user on the team, AlignerBot cases can still be assigned to a human designer — but nothing dispatches automatically. This is the most common cause of a stuck pipeline.

Step 7 — Smoke-test with a real case

From a different email (or a colleague's account on a different machine):

Sign up at app.cympha.com/sign-up as Clinical (the clinician role).
Go to /cases/new, search for your lab name, pick AlignerBot as the service, fill in the form (a couple of test STLs are enough), submit.

Switch back to your lab manager account. The new case lands in your inbox with status Submitted, held by you. Move it to Designing — the status control previews who will receive the case before you commit; with an AlignerBot seat on the team, the case routes to that user.

What should happen next:

The case status is Designing, held by the AlignerBot-seat user.
On the agent's next poll (it checks for new cases every 20 seconds), the case files download into the workspace folder you chose in Step 5, as {workspace}\{category}\{PatientName_Date_caseID}\, together with a refreshed lab_slip.pdf.
The agent launches OrthoPlus on the case.
OrthoPlus runs Phase-1 planning and writes the design output into the case folder. The agent uploads the .gvw review file automatically, and the case flips to Awaiting Approval with the Plan Approval Pending label — no lab click involved.

If the customer (your test account) now opens the case in the browser and approves the plan, the cycle repeats for Phase-2 (appliance design).

What success looks like

/account on gm.cympha.com shows your OrthoPlus subscription as Active.
The Cympha Agent Manager shows as paired, and its cloud workspace folder is set.
At least one team member on My Team holds the AlignerBot seat.
A test case round-trips through Submitted → Designing → Awaiting Approval without anyone touching files manually.

Troubleshooting

"No subscription found" when activating OrthoPlus. Your activation code is past its 10-minute window. Generate a new one from gm.cympha.com/account.

The pair request expired before you approved it. Pair requests are valid for 1 hour; an expired one can't be approved. Click Pair to Cympha… in the tray again to send a fresh request, then approve it in the browser.

Test case stays at "Submitted". Either no one on the team holds the AlignerBot seat, or the AlignerBot Planning service is deactivated on your lab. Check My Team and My Lab → Services.

Test case flips to "Designing" but nothing happens locally. Two usual causes: the cloud workspace folder was never set (tray → Cloud Monitoring ▸ → Configure workspace… — it reads (not set) until chosen), or OrthoPlus isn't installed on that workstation. Right-click the tray icon — the AlignerBot ▸ submenu only appears when OrthoPlus is installed.

What to do next

Add a second AlignerBot workstation when one machine isn't enough — repeat Steps 3-5 with a fresh activation code from gm.cympha.com/account. Each desktop binds to its own code.
Add Implant Master to your lab if you also do implant guides — same pattern, different desktop product.
The AlignerBot Planning service arrives with its expected-files checklist pre-filled. If you offer other services with their own order forms, add them on My Lab → Services and use the Upload form → Extract fields → Preview form flow to build the doctor-facing form from your existing PDF.

Last updated 2026-07-30.