How to adjust ortho planning and staging in Cympha Studio

This guide adjusts ortho staging in Cympha Studio with the Movement chart and IPR editing, then round-trips the case XML with OrthoPlus, GuideMia's clear aligner software.

Audience: Clinicians and designers doing orthodontic planning and staging work directly in Cympha Studio — either reviewing a case from the lab, or adjusting staging before exporting an updated plan back to GuideMia OrthoPlus.

You'll come away knowing: how to navigate a treatment plan step by step, open the Movement chart and re-stage a tooth's movement, toggle and edit IPR clearance, push fine adjustments with the tooth movement panel, and round-trip the case XML between Studio and OrthoPlus.

Time required: Fifteen to twenty minutes for the first case. Five to ten minutes per case after that.

Before you start

You need:

An orthodontic case in a format Studio understands — typically a GuideMia OrthoPlus .gvw archive, or a .pac step archive. The deep-dive controls in this guide (Movement chart, IPR, Case XML) require GuideMia .gvw specifically; .pac archives play back but don't expose the same authoring controls.
A desktop-width browser window. The Movement chart and IPR buttons on the case bar only appear at viewport widths of about 1024 pixels or more. On narrower windows those controls are hidden — widen the window or move to an external monitor before starting.
Cympha Studio open at studio.cympha.com.

Step 1 — Switch to the Orthodontics workspace and open the case

In the top bar, open the Workspace nav and pick Orthodontics. The hamburger menu narrows to the actions you'll need for ortho work — DICOM, OrthoPlus plan, optical scan, articulation, pictures, and so on.

Then load the case:

☰ → Open OrthoPlus plan… for a local .gvw.
☰ → Open optical scan file… also accepts .gvw and .pac.
☰ → Open URL… for a hosted .gvw link (subject to CORS).
Drag-and-drop a .gvw file onto the viewer. A .gvw deep link in the URL switches to Orthodontics automatically.

Wait until the progress indicator clears and the teeth appear in 3D. The floating case bar appears at the bottom of the viewer once the plan is loaded — that's the control surface for everything that follows.

Step 2 — Get comfortable with the case bar

The case bar holds, left to right, the controls you'll use throughout the workflow.

Step slider. Shows the current step against the maximum (5/24 style, with slight labelling differences between GuideMia and .pac). Drag the slider and the scene updates when you release the pointer — not on every tick, so the model doesn't rebuild while you're scrubbing. When the slider has keyboard focus, Arrow Left/Right, Home, End, and Page Up/Down move the step and apply immediately.

Previous / Play / Next. The < and > buttons single-step backward and forward, disabled at the ends. Play advances one step every 200 ms until the final step, then stops — it does not wrap to step 0. Starting Play automatically turns the IPR overlay off if it was on, so the labels don't visually lag behind the model.

Movement chart (table icon). Toggles the floating Movement by step staging panel. Desktop width + GuideMia only.

IPR (IPR icon). Toggles the IPR overlay. Desktop width + GuideMia only.

Case XML actions:

Upload (up-arrow icon) — replace the in-memory plan with an .xml file you pick.
Download (down-arrow icon) — export the current case DOM as .xml.
Cloud upload (cloud-up icon, signed-in users only, only when the .gvw was opened from a remote URL such as a Cympha case link) — uploads the current XML next to the source .gvw in the cloud as a sibling .xml. No local file is created. Use this to send your review back to the case in Cympha without going through download → re-upload.

The brand mark sits at the bottom-left of the viewer above the status line. The status line is where Studio reports success, errors, and short hints — keep an eye on it whenever a control "does nothing" visible.

Step 3 — Open the Movement chart and read the grid

Click the Movement chart (table icon) on the case bar. The Movement by step panel opens as a floating window — drag its header to reposition it. Position is remembered for the session.

The grid is laid out as:

Columns are teeth in universal chart order. The header row shows FDI numbers.
Rows are transition steps 1 … N, where row s represents the transition into step s. The row label for the step currently in the viewer is highlighted.
Blue draggable blocks mark cells where that tooth has visible movement on that transition. Keyframe-only cells may show a different fill without being draggable.

Step 4 — Inspect a cell

Single-click any cell. After a short delay (so a double-click can still register), a floating hint opens with:

The primary staging line from the viewer.
If that cell carries movement: the step Δ for this transition and the total Δ from step 0, in compact mm/° format.

The hint auto-dismisses in about 2 seconds, but hovering the hint keeps it open; leaving the hint schedules a longer dismiss. Depending on the cell, the hint may also show editing controls; if one of those actions fails, the reason prints in the status line.

Keyboard equivalent: on a focused cell, Enter or Space opens the same hint, anchored to the cell.

Step 5 — Re-stage a movement by drag-and-drop

To shift when a tooth's movement happens, drag the blue block vertically within the same tooth column — you can't drag across columns.

Drop on a lower row (a later step) postpones the movement: the hold band stretches and the tail shifts.
Drop on a higher row (≥ 1) pulls the movement earlier, but only when the target stays inside the same contiguous movement stage for that tooth.
Invalid targets do not highlight; the drop is silently ignored.

After a successful drag, a synthetic click is suppressed so the hint doesn't immediately reopen on top of your release point.

Step 6 — Double-click a cell to edit the tooth

Double-click a data cell to jump the viewer to that step and enter tooth movement mode for that universal tooth. If the policy doesn't allow adjustment at that tooth/step (locked keyframe, fixed pose, etc.), Studio shows a toast explaining why instead of moving anything.

Double-click a row header (the step number) to jump the viewer to that step without picking a tooth. The column selection clears.

Step 7 — Use the tooth movement panel for fine adjustment

When tooth movement is active — whether from a double-click in the grid or a double-click on a tooth in the main 3D view — the tooth movement panel opens (lower-left). The title shows the tooth number and jaw.

For each axis, the panel has:

Translate X / Y / Z in millimetres.
Rotate about X / Y / Z in degrees.

Each row carries a numeric step size, − / + buttons for one step, and a slider. Drag the slider for a continuous push; on release, Studio applies the accumulated delta and resets the slider to zero. Changing the tooth or the case step resets the fine sliders too.

If the current step disallows adjustment (locked keyframe, etc.), Studio shows a toast rather than silently applying the motion.

Gizmo handles on the tooth in the 3D view still work in parallel for coarse moves — drag the axes to translate, the rotation rings to tilt.

Step 8 — Toggle IPR and edit clearance

Click the IPR icon on the case bar. The IPR overlay projects labels and lines near interproximal contacts along the arch. Label colour reflects signed clearance:

Green-ish for gap (positive clearance).
Red-ish for collision / overlap (negative clearance).

Multiple contacts may fan their labels slightly so they don't stack on top of each other.

To edit a contact:

Click the numeric label in the 3D view. A popover opens with a Clearance (mm) field. The convention shown in the UI is negative = collision/overlap, positive = gap.
Type the desired value. Press Enter or click Apply to commit. Escape, Cancel, or a click outside the popover closes without applying.
On commit, Studio adjusts the contact and performs distal translations on both teeth (in mesial → distal order) to realise the new clearance.

The IPR overlay turns off automatically when you start Play. Re-toggle the IPR icon whenever you want to see the labels again.

Clinical responsibility note: IPR values in the popover drive automated tooth shifts in software. Verify against your treatment plan and local regulations before committing the values to a finalised case.

Step 9 — Round-trip the XML with OrthoPlus

The case XML is the compact "brain" of the plan — tooth transforms, staging metadata, keyframe flags. Exchanging XML keeps Studio and GuideMia OrthoPlus synchronised without shipping the full mesh archive every time.

Studio → OrthoPlus:

In Studio, finish your edits (Steps 3–8 above).
On the case bar, click the Download (down-arrow) icon. Studio exports the current case DOM as .xml with a filename based on the case basename.
In GuideMia OrthoPlus, import or merge that XML per the OrthoPlus documentation.

OrthoPlus → Studio:

In OrthoPlus, export the updated case XML.
In Studio, click the Upload (up-arrow) icon on the case bar and pick the .xml. Studio applies the plan from the XML.
Errors during upload (malformed XML, mismatched case) show in an alert.

If mesh assets changed in OrthoPlus (new STLs for teeth or other geometry), open a fresh .gvw instead of relying on XML alone — XML doesn't carry meshes.

Cloud round-trip (signed-in users, when the .gvw was opened from a remote URL such as a Cympha case link): click the cloud-up icon to upload the current XML next to the source .gvw in the cloud. The case in Cympha picks up the new XML on its next load — no intermediate local download / re-upload.

Step 10 — Save a copy for sharing

To produce a single shareable file with your current plan, click Download on the top toolbar. The browser saves the case to your default download folder.

What happens next

After XML round-trip, the case is in sync between Studio and OrthoPlus. The next reviewer can open either side and see your staging changes, IPR adjustments, and tooth moves.

For ongoing review work, the Media gallery (top toolbar) holds your Screen captures and Add pictures… uploads alongside any case media from the .gvw. Save the whole workspace as a Cympha .cyp project (☰ → Save project) to keep captures, captions, and the registered scene together.

Troubleshooting

The Movement chart and IPR icons aren't showing. They're desktop-only and require viewport width of about 1024 px or more. Widen the browser window, or move to an external monitor. They also require a GuideMia .gvw — .pac cases don't expose them.

A drag in the Movement chart doesn't drop. Studio rejects drops that violate staging rules (wrong column, outside the contiguous movement stage when pulling earlier, etc.). Invalid targets don't highlight; if no highlight appears as you hover, the drop won't be accepted.

Double-click on a tooth shows a "tooth move blocked" toast. Policy at that step forbids manual adjustment — usually a fixed keyframe or a step that doesn't own that tooth's transition. Move to a different step (try a transition row where the tooth has a blue block) and retry.

IPR clearance edits don't persist. The popover must be committed with Enter or Apply. A click outside the popover cancels without applying — that's intentional so accidental clicks don't change values, but it's easy to miss. Re-open the label and commit explicitly.

Upload XML alerted "errors." The XML didn't parse, or it doesn't match the case loaded. Re-export from OrthoPlus, confirm the case ID lines up, and try again. The status line at the bottom often carries a more specific second message.

Cloud upload icon isn't visible. Either you're not signed in, or the .gvw was opened from a local file rather than a remote URL — cloud upload is only offered when both conditions are true (the case has a known cloud sibling object to write next to).