Use OrthoClic — chairside aligner planning

OrthoClic plans a simple aligner case at the chair with GuideMia clear aligner software: scan, repair, segment, stage and save a .gpk, then hand the case to Cympha through Agent Manager.

Audience: A chairside clinician (orthodontist, GP doing aligners) who wants to plan a simple clear-aligner case beside the patient — repair, segment, set targets, stage, and hand off — without leaving the operatory.

You'll come away knowing: how to scan and import, run the aligner-planning workflow to a finished plan, save your work, and hand the case to Cympha — automatically through the Cympha Agent Manager, or manually through the browser.

Time required: The first case is about learning the flow. After that, chairside cases are fast enough to run while the patient is still in the chair.

Before you start

You need:

OrthoClic installed and activated. OrthoClic is GuideMia's chairside aligner planning product — a single tier, a single price. Subscription and activation work like the other GuideMia desktop products (see Set up AlignerBot for your lab); pick the OrthoClic product when subscribing. Activation codes are valid for 10 minutes and activate one machine.
An intraoral scanner that can export .stl / .ply / .obj. Any modern scanner does.
(Recommended) The Cympha Agent Manager installed and paired on the same workstation, with File Monitoring watching your scanner's export folder. This is what turns freshly exported scans into a Cympha case with almost no clicks. See Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager.

OrthoClic is a single-purpose tool: chairside clear-aligner planning. If you need the full feature set — bracket bonding guides, direct-printed aligners and retainers, case restart — use OrthoPlus instead.

Step 1 — Scan and export

Scan the upper and lower arches plus a bite registration on your intraoral scanner. Export each as a separate .stl / .ply / .obj file into a folder the Cympha Agent Manager's File Monitoring is watching.

Tip — set the export folder once. Configure your scanner to always export to the same root folder, and add that folder to File Monitoring (the dialog is simply Add folder… / Remove selected). File Monitoring has no file-type filter — every new file in a watched folder is picked up — so each case's exports surface the moment the scanner finishes, without you thinking about file paths.

Step 2 — Open the scans in OrthoClic

Launch OrthoClic and load the two arches: the upper goes in via the input labelled "Upper jaw stone model or intra-oral scan", then load the lower jaw scan. Stone-model digitisations and intraoral scans are both supported inputs. Add the bite scan if you exported one.

Step 3 — Repair and segment

Run All-in-One Fix — the single-click scan repair. It handles surface artifacts and non-manifold geometry, including holes that connect the lingual and buccal sides in the interproximal area. For chairside scans this is normally all the repair you need.
Run Automatic Segmentation — the arch is separated into individually addressed tooth meshes.
If a single tooth comes out wrong (heavily restored crown, partially erupted molar), re-do just that tooth with the manual segmentation tools — Define tooth boundary, Segment tooth, Adjust tooth boundary — rather than re-running the arch.

Step 4 — Set the target and stage

Fit the arch form with the per-jaw Width and Curvedness sliders — matching the patient's natural arch shape here is the step that most decides how natural the plan looks.
Drag the Preview initial tooth setup slider — the value is the percentage the teeth will likely be moved, with 100% meaning the teeth move all the way to the ideal arch curves. Scrub it to judge the target before committing.
Click Finalize to lock in the final positions (collision/IPR adjustment runs as part of this).
Set Upper Steps and Lower Steps — per-jaw step counts, set independently — then run Automatic Staging. It eliminates collisions mid-simulation and may add steps to keep every movement feasible.
Optionally run Automatic attachments — the system decides which teeth need attachments, of what kind and size; you can always add, delete, or modify them — or skip attachments entirely for a no-attachment plan.

Step 5 — Save your work

Save the project. Two things to know about the files involved:

The project file is a .gos — OrthoClic's native project, one stable file per case. It stays on your workstation for reopening and editing; it is not the file you upload.
The uploadable deliverables are the .gvw plan-review file (what a doctor or colleague opens in Cympha Studio in the browser) and the .gos.gpk Save-for-Transfer pack (the whole project packed for transfer, produced when a design phase is complete).

What happens next — with the Agent Manager

If File Monitoring is watching your export folder:

New files surface in the agent. The tray shows a "Cympha Agent — New files" notification, and the new files are listed in the agent's monitor panel.
Create a case from the monitor. The agent's create-a-case action opens a new-case page in your browser with the files attached, where you pick the case shape:
- Clinical case — you keep the work under your own ownership. The case rests at the Clinical status for its life: no lab, no approval cycle, and you can keep adding files to it from the case page.
- Lab case — you pick a lab. The case starts at Submitted, held by that lab's manager, who assigns it onward.
Fill in the patient details and submit. The files travel with the case and appear in its file list.

If you didn't enable File Monitoring

You can still hand off the case manually:

Sign into app.cympha.com and start a new case.
Drag the .stl scans (and, when you have them, the .gvw or .gos.gpk deliverable) into the upload area. Note the .gos project file itself isn't an upload format — upload the scans and the deliverables, not the project.
Fill in the form and submit.

The end-state is the same kind of Cympha case; File Monitoring just saves you the manual drag-and-drop.

Troubleshooting

The finalised setup looks wildly off. The arch curve is almost always the problem. Re-fit the Width and Curvedness sliders to the patient's actual arch shape, scrub Preview initial tooth setup again, and Finalize.

Automatic Segmentation missed a tooth. Use the manual tools on just that tooth — Define tooth boundary, Segment tooth, Adjust tooth boundary — instead of re-running the whole arch.

The agent didn't notice my new scans. Two checks, in order: (1) the export folder is actually in File Monitoring's watch list — open the monitoring dialog and Add folder… if it isn't; (2) the agent is paired — check the tray icon. If both are fine, look for the files in the agent's monitor panel directly.

Activation prompt mid-session. Generate a fresh activation code from your account page and paste it in. Codes are single-use and valid for 10 minutes.

Last updated 2026-07-30.