How to build a solid dental model from a scan in Cympha Studio

Make dental model turns an open intraoral scan into a closed solid with a flat base in Cympha Studio, giving the dental case a printable arch or study model.

Audience: Clinicians and lab designers who have a thin-shell arch scan — typical intraoral scan, open underneath — and need to turn it into a closed solid model with a flat base. Use cases: producing a printable arch model from a chairside scan, generating a placeholder solid for a workflow demo or teaching session, or stub data for a missing arch where you only have one jaw.

You'll come away knowing: where the Make dental model command lives in Studio, how to invoke it from a user-added mesh, how to aim the extrusion direction with the on-screen arrow, what the Create / Cancel dialog asks you to confirm, where the new solid lands in the scene, and the one important warning about when not to use this tool.

Time required: Around thirty seconds to a minute once you know the workflow. Most of the time is spent positioning the arrow so the cut plane sits where you want the flat base of the model.

Before you start

You need:

A mesh added to the scene — via the top-toolbar Add model (+), ☰ Open optical scan file…, drag-and-drop, or a URL. Formats: .stl, .ply, .obj.
A scan that's actually a thin shell with an open boundary — i.e. an intraoral arch scan with no underside, or any model that has a free rim around its perimeter. Make dental model builds the solid from that open rim. A fully closed mesh has no open boundary for the extrusion to follow.
No GuideMia OrthoPlus case loaded. The Create dialog for Make dental model carries an explicit warning that you should not build a solid base on GuideMia OrthoPlus case geometry — the planner relies on the original tooth-by-tooth shells, and turning them into closed solids breaks that workflow. Standalone added meshes are the supported target.

Sign into studio.cympha.com and open your scan.

What "arch model" means here. If you came looking for a tool that draws an arch from scratch without any scan — laying down a curve and synthesising tooth shapes along it — that's not what Studio does. (The arch curve in the CBCT viewer is a different feature, used to drive panoramic MPR — see How to use the CBCT viewer in Cympha Studio.) Make dental model is the closest tool: it builds a solid arch model from your scan, not from nothing. If you need a fully synthetic placeholder arch with no scan input, contact us — we can help with that workflow.

Step 1 — Open the mesh context menu

Right-click directly on the mesh body in the main 3D view. Right-clicking empty space won't open the menu. The menu title shows the file name.
Find Make dental model in the list. It sits at the top level of the cleanup tools, alongside the other standalone-mesh commands.

If you don't see Make dental model, the most common reason is that a full GuideMia case is loaded — use ☰ → Clear scene and right-click the mesh again.

Step 2 — Read the Create dialog

Clicking Make dental model opens a small dialog with:

A short hint: Drag the blue arrow tip on the model (anchored at its center). Create builds a new solid from the boundary rim along the arrow to the cut plane at the tip.
An explicit warning: For GuideMia OrthoPlus, do not make solid models. Honour this — OrthoPlus expects the original shell topology of case teeth, not closed solids.
The name of the source mesh you right-clicked.
Create and Cancel buttons.

Don't click Create yet — first aim the arrow.

Step 3 — Aim the direction arrow

While the dialog is open, Studio displays a direction arrow widget on the mesh:

The arrow is anchored at the centroid of the mesh (its base sits at the average of the mesh vertices).
It points in an initial direction — for a fresh session that's straight down (−Z); if you used Make dental model earlier in the same Studio session, the arrow remembers the previous direction and length so a follow-up arch reuses the same setup.
The tip of the arrow defines a cut plane perpendicular to the arrow direction.

To aim:

Drag the blue tip to rotate the arrow and change its length. The tip moves freely in 3D — orbit the camera if you need a different angle to grab it.
Point the arrow away from the open side of the shell. For an upper arch scan held in occlusal-up orientation, that means pointing the arrow upward (toward the palate's open boundary direction) — the new solid will extrude from the boundary rim along the arrow.
Set the length so the cut plane (at the arrow tip) sits where you want the flat base of the finished model. A short arrow gives a shallow base; a long arrow gives a deep, plinth-like base.
The whole scene rerenders as you drag, so you can preview the geometry of the arrow against the scan before committing.

Why the arrow. Make dental model doesn't guess a "down" direction for you — different scans come in different orientations, and the buccal-lingual axis is not always the build direction you want. The arrow lets you specify the extrusion direction and base height explicitly in one gesture.

Step 4 — Press Create

Once the arrow is aimed and sized:

Click Create in the dialog.
Studio shows the global busy cursor while it computes the solid.
The new solid is added as a fresh mesh in the scene — it does not replace your scan. Both meshes are now visible (the original shell and the new closed solid).
The status line confirms with "Added dental base mesh …" and the number of points in the new solid.

Step 5 — Inspect the new solid

The new mesh appears in the Models list on the top toolbar with a derived name — typically the source name with dental-base.stl appended (e.g. upper-arch dental-base.stl). A unique numeric suffix is added if a mesh with that name already exists.

Inspect:

The rim of the new solid should sit flush against the open boundary of your scan — no gap, no overlap.
The side walls should follow the arrow direction.
The flat base at the bottom should sit at the position of the arrow tip.
The two meshes (original shell + new solid) can be toggled independently from the Models list or via the Eye icon — usually you only need the solid for export and can hide the original.

You can now Add model (+) more scans, export the solid via Download if your workflow uses that, or save the whole project as a .cyp (☰ → Save project) to preserve both meshes together.

What success looks like

A new closed solid mesh sits alongside (not over) your original scan.
The solid's rim matches the open boundary of the source scan with no visible step.
The solid has a flat base at the level you set with the arrow tip.
The status line confirms the new mesh was added, with a point count.

Troubleshooting

Make dental model isn't on the right-click menu. A GuideMia case is loaded. Use ☰ → Clear scene and right-click the mesh again.

Studio reports "Empty mesh geometry." The mesh you right-clicked has no points — typically because the file failed to parse. Reimport.

Studio reports "Could not start dental model mode." The viewer wasn't ready when you clicked. Wait a beat after loading the scan, then right-click again.

The arrow won't grab. Orbit the camera so the blue tip isn't occluded by mesh geometry. Once the tip is in clear view, the drag works.

The new solid clips through the scan. The arrow direction was off. Delete the new solid from the Models list and run Make dental model again — point the arrow more carefully away from the scan's exposed front-facing surface and toward the open boundary side.

My scan was a fully closed mesh — the result is degenerate. Make dental model builds from an open rim. A closed mesh has no rim. Either skip this tool, or trim the mesh first (How to clean up meshes with the brush tools) to expose a clean boundary.

I'm working on a GuideMia OrthoPlus case. Stop and read the dialog warning: For GuideMia OrthoPlus, do not make solid models. Use the case's own tools instead — see How to use OrthoPlus essentials.