Use ClearAligner.AI direct (no lab in between)

At app.cympha.com/caai a clinic orders aligners through AI clear aligner design with credits: Phase-1 review is free, self-approval uses one credit, and Phase-2 design follows with no lab involved.

Audience: Clinicians who want AI-designed clear aligners without routing through a lab. You have a Cympha account, an intra-oral scan, and a credit card. No OrthoPlus install required to start a case — though you'll want it for Phase-2 revisions.

You'll come away knowing: how the ClearAligner.AI flow at app.cympha.com/caai differs from the regular /cases/new, how credits work (free Phase-1 review, one credit on self-approval), and how to dispatch the design.

Time required: About fifteen minutes for the first case — five to submit, five for Phase-1 to come back, five to review and self-approve.

Before you start

You need:

An intra-oral scan in STL or PLY (per-arch is best). The CAAI form is single-flow — no lab picker, no service picker, no payment-via-platform handshake.
A Cympha account. Sign up at app.cympha.com/sign-up if you don't have one. New accounts have no role until you pick one on the Select Your Role screen — choose the Clinical tile (the doctor role). The choice is made once.
A credit card if you want to dispatch the appliance design. Phase-1 planning is free — you can take a case all the way through plan review before deciding whether to pay.

ClearAligner.AI cases live in their own category and are designed by GuideMia's central AI workstation — no lab picker, no lab assignment.

Step 1 — Land on the splash and start a case

Go to app.cympha.com/caai. The hero reads "AI-designed clear aligners, direct to your chair" with a subtitle about skipping the lab queue.

If you're signed in, the primary button reads Start a new case and takes you to /caai/cases/new. If you're signed out, the button reads Get started — free Phase 1 and routes through sign-up first (with the new-case page as the post-sign-up destination).

Step 2 — Upload the scans

The first section on /caai/cases/new is titled Files. It's the same drop-zone component as the regular /cases/new, but there's no lab-routing context — files attach to the draft CAAI case directly.

Drop the upper and lower STLs. Bite scan optional but recommended. You can keep filling the rest of the form while files upload in the background.

Step 3 — Fill the patient and treatment plan

The second section is Patient & treatment plan. It reuses the same AlignBotParamsForm you'd see for an AlignerBot lab case:

Patient name (required), gender, date of birth, complaints.
Per-jaw: Plan range (all / 3-3 / 4-4 / 5-5), Automatic extraction, explicit Extractions and Missing teeth as FDI tooth numbers, allowed IPR, Protraction/retraction, Expansion, Extrusion/intrusion, midline alignment, Spee curve, sagittal and coronal inclination.

The same advice from the regular AlignerBot doc applies: set hard don'ts and let the planner explore the rest. Over-constraining is the most common cause of a useless Phase-1.

Step 4 — Tell the AI what to produce

The third section is What ClearAligner.AI should produce. Four design kinds:

Arch model — final-position arch models for bracket bonding.
Aligner — per-step aligner shells (the most common choice).
Bracket guide — bonding guides.
Treatment only — stop after Phase-1 planning; no appliance design.

Set From step and To step to bound the step range you want produced. Tick Add attachments if you want auto-placed attachments during design (relevant for Aligner and Arch model). Tick Generate cutting path if you want a trim path for Aligner output — requires fixture setup downstream.

These options apply to Phase-2 dispatch, after you self-approve the Phase-1 plan. They're captured at intake so the first dispatch already knows what to produce.

Step 5 — Submit and wait for Phase-1

Click Submit case. The page navigates to /cases/<id> — the same case detail view used everywhere else in Cympha.

What you'll see on the case detail page:

Submitted status briefly while the case is queued.
Designing as soon as the central CAAI workstation picks it up.
Awaiting Approval with a Plan Approval Pending label once the Phase-1 plan is ready. You'll get an email; the case opens to /cases/<id>/approve.

Phase-1 is free. You can submit cases, get plans back, and abandon them at no charge. Cympha doesn't deduct a credit until you self-approve and dispatch the appliance design.

Step 6 — Review Phase-1 and self-approve

When the plan lands, open the case. You'll see the plan files (the Phase-1 cympha output) listed under Files. Download and review them — typically in OrthoPlus, though for a treatment-only sanity check you can preview the staging in your browser.

If you like the plan, click Self-approve and run aligner design on the case detail page. This is the moment you pay: the backend checks your credit balance and, if it's empty, the button is replaced with Buy credits to dispatch (links to /credits).

Step 7 — Buy credits (one-time)

At app.cympha.com/credits you'll see three packages:

Single case — 1 credit, one ClearAligner.AI case
Five-pack — 5 credits (marked Popular)
Ten-pack — 10 credits, biggest savings per credit

Prices are shown on each card. Click Buy, complete the secure checkout, and you'll be redirected back. Credits land in your wallet immediately.

One credit covers a case for its full lifetime. Re-runs, XML revisions, and Phase-2 iterations on a credit-paid case are all included. You only pay when dispatching a new case.

Back on the case detail page, Self-approve and run aligner design now works. Click it. A confirmation appears and the case flips to Designing as Phase-2 dispatches.

Step 8 — Approve the appliance

Phase-2 takes longer than Phase-1 (full per-step appliance design instead of just planning). When it completes, the case lands in Awaiting Approval again — this time with the Appliance Approval Pending label.

Same /approve page, same buttons. Approve to finish. Request changes if you want to iterate — for an AlignerBot or CAAI case, "Request changes" requires either an XML overlay (exported from Cympha Studio's 3D review) or a replacement GPK pack (from OrthoPlus Planner). Free-text instructions are not accepted: the planner has no English parser, so a typed "move tooth 8 buccally" wouldn't translate. The dialog surfaces both paths and links to /downloads for the tools.

When to use ClearAligner.AI vs. routing through a lab

Use ClearAligner.AI when you don't have a lab partner, when you want fastest-possible turnaround, or when you want full clinician control over the treatment parameters.
Use a lab (the regular /cases/new flow with a lab picked) when the lab adds clinical review, brackets manufacturing, or finishing services you don't want to do yourself.

The same scans, the same OrthoPlus engine, the same final aligner STL files. The difference is who reviews and who fulfils.

Troubleshooting

The Self-approve button isn't there — I see Buy credits to dispatch instead. Your wallet is empty. Click through, buy a credit pack, return to the case. The button returns automatically.

Phase-1 is taking longer than expected. During peak load the central workstation can take longer to get to your case. The case stays in Designing until the plan lands; there's no action for you to take.

I want to iterate on the plan before paying. You can — Phase-1 is free, and you can self-approve only when you're sure. If the Phase-1 plan is wrong, click Request Changes on the /approve page and upload an XML overlay or a replacement GPK. No credit is deducted until self-approve fires.

I uploaded the wrong scan. Open the case, delete the file from the Files panel, and re-upload — uploads and deletes are blocked only once a case is delivered or cancelled. If Phase-1 already ran on the wrong scan, use Request Changes so the plan is regenerated from the corrected input.

Related how-to: see Submit a new AlignerBot case for the lab-routed equivalent, and Approve or request changes on a lab's design for the shared /approve page details.