How to get denture base and teeth aligned in CAM output

In the Dental System, it is possible to receive CAM files in two different orientations, depending on the position of the checkbox “Apply enhanced transformation” in the Dental System Control Panel → Site settings → Manufacturing processes → Apply enhanced transformation.

These two orientations for CAM output files are:

 1. Enhanced Transformation ON – default orientation (the option is ON by default). The denture base and the teeth block are perpendicular to Z axis individually, Figure 1.

 The denture base and the teeth block are oriented to achieve the minimal height dimension along the Z axis. This allows to minimize the time and material consumption for printing and milling. This orientation is the best for manufacturing, but STL files can be (and in most cases, it is so) not aligned. An example of CAM output is given in Figure 2.

Here the denture base and the teeth block are not aligned in the space as it is seen in the cross-section, Figure 3.

This orientation is convenient for manufacturing, however, inconvenient for visual inspection. To simplify visual inspection, additional Visualisation output may be generated by right-clicking in Dental Manager on the order → Advanced → Export Visualisation output. Apart from output CAM files, this output also contains the models used for design and thus makes visual inspection of results easy and convenient. The example of Visualisation output is shown in Figure 4.

The default directory for Visualisation output is C:\3shape\ManufacturingDir\Visualization output. Also, the output directory can be checked or changed in the Dental System Control Panel → System Settings → Visualization output folder.

2.    Enhanced Transformation OFF – in the scan orientation, STL files are aligned. In this case, the output looks the most natural for humans; thus, the result is easy to inspect. An example of such output is depicted in Figure 5.

The cross-section analysis indicates that 3D models for the base and the teeth are aligned in the space. The gap between the base and the teeth in some cross-sections is the glue space required to be filled by glue connecting the base and the teeth. An example of a cross-section is shown in Figure 6.

However, this approach has a disadvantage - the output often is not aligned with the coordinates required for models to be printed or milled, i.e. not convenient for manufacturing. The example of the model's position in the space is given in Figure 7. Here the model is almost perpendicular to Y axis, while for manufacturing it should be perpendicular to Z axis.

After changing the position of the Apply Enhanced Transformation checkbox, it is not required to re-design the order - it is enough to save the settings and generate CAM output again.