Sending Better Digital Cases.
Most digital cases that stall in the laboratory do so for one of a small number of avoidable reasons. Working to a consistent capture and review routine removes nearly all of them.
Prepare the field before you pick up the scanner
Retraction and haemostasis come first, exactly as they would for an impression. The margin should be visible, dry and clear of tissue before capture begins, not something you attempt to work around during the scan.
If the field will not stay dry long enough to capture the margin cleanly, that is information rather than an obstacle — it usually means the case wants a conventional impression, or that the tissue needs more management before either record is attempted.
Scan to a consistent path
A repeatable sequence matters more than speed. A common approach is to run the occlusal surfaces first to establish the arch, then return along the lingual and buccal, keeping the scanner moving steadily rather than hovering or jumping between regions.
Jumping introduces alignment work the software does not need to do. Hovering over one spot produces layered, noisy data in a region that was probably already captured adequately.
Capture more than the preparation
Include the adjacent teeth in full and enough of the arch beyond them to give the bite alignment something substantial to work with. Contacts are established against the adjacent teeth, so a partially captured neighbour produces a contact that needs adjusting at the chair.
Capture the opposing arch to a comparable standard. An opposing scan taken quickly and incompletely undermines an otherwise excellent preparation scan, because the occlusion is designed against it.
Verify the bite deliberately
Confirm the patient is fully closed in maximum intercuspation before capturing the buccal bite, and capture it on both sides. Then check the resulting occlusal contacts in the software rather than assuming.
If the patient has no stable intercuspal position, or if the case involves a planned change in vertical dimension, say so on the prescription. That changes how the case is mounted and designed.
Review, then send
Rotate the model and inspect the margin around its full circumference. Check the insertion axis in the software. Look for holes, especially interproximally and behind the most posterior unit. If the software allows margin marking and you are confident of the finish line, mark it — you can see the tooth and we cannot.
Do not delete data that looks untidy but is real. Excess soft tissue in the scan is harmless; a trimmed-away margin is not.
Software-side mistakes
A proportion of digital cases arrive technically perfect and functionally wrong because of how the case was set up in the software rather than how it was scanned.
The recurring ones are selecting the wrong restoration type at case creation, marking the wrong tooth number, choosing a material in the software that does not match the written prescription, and leaving default settings in place for a case that needed something else.
Where the software prescription and the written prescription disagree, we have to stop and ask which is correct. Reading the case setup back once before sending catches this, and it is quicker than the message exchange that otherwise follows.
Prepare before the appointment
Confirm the case is set up correctly in the software before the patient sits down: right patient, right tooth numbers, right restoration type, right laboratory. Correcting any of these afterwards is possible but fiddly, and some corrections require rescanning.
Check the scanner tip is clean and warmed, and that the unit is within its calibration interval. A scan degraded by a fogged tip is not obvious while capturing and is very obvious in the laboratory.
Soft tissue in the scan
A common instinct is to trim away every trace of soft tissue so the model looks clean. Resist it. Tissue adjacent to the margin gives the technician context for emergence and contour, and trimming aggressively near a finish line risks removing margin data along with the tissue.
The tissue that does need managing is the tissue in the way — a cheek folding over the buccal of a molar, a tongue drifting across the lingual, a retractor that shifted mid-scan. Capture cleanly with the tissue held where it should be, rather than capturing loosely and editing afterwards.
Digital cases that still need a physical record
Some cases benefit from both. Where the occlusal scheme is complex, where a case involves an altered vertical dimension, or where several units are being restored together, a mounted set of casts alongside the digital file gives the technician something to assess by hand that a screen does not fully replace.
The same applies where emergence and contact need to be judged against tissue rather than against geometry. Sending a scan and noting that you would like a printed model produced for verification is a legitimate instruction, and it costs less than a remake on a case where the fit has to be confirmed physically.
Equally, some cases are better recorded conventionally from the outset. A scan attempted on a margin that will not stay dry is not improved by persistence, and there is no loss of face in reaching for a tray.
Send the context with the file
The file on its own is geometry. What makes it a case is the prescription: material, shade with the guide used, margin type, the antagonist, and anything unusual.
Photographs are worth including for anterior and shade-critical work. For implant cases, state the implant system, the platform and connection, and whether you intend a screw-retained or cement-retained restoration. Those details determine component selection and cannot be inferred reliably from geometry alone.
In short
- Control the field before capture, not during it
- Use a consistent scan path; avoid jumping and hovering
- Capture adjacent teeth in full and the opposing arch properly
- Confirm maximum intercuspation, capture both sides, verify in software
- Send prescription, shade guide used, photographs and implant component detail with the file
More on digital
Discuss a case
Where a case sits between options, a short conversation before preparation is usually quicker than resolving it afterwards.