Dental CAD design in South Tyrol: outsourced design for labs
Dental CAD design in South Tyrol for labs: how outsourced design from Bolzano works, what to send, files returned and support in Italian, German and English.
More and more dental labs in South Tyrol receive intraoral scans from clinics but do not have enough hours, or enough CAD experience, to design everything in house. Outsourced dental CAD design in South Tyrol solves that step: the lab receives the case, sends the files and gets back a design ready for production. This post explains how the service works from Bolzano, what to send, what comes back and what changes compared with a distant provider.
How outsourced design works
The lab remains the clinic’s contact and the manufacturer of the device. The designer works for the lab, with its materials, libraries and machines. The flow of a case is simple:
- The lab sends scans, prescription and notes, from the scanner portal or with a transfer link.
- The designer checks the files and reports at once anything missing or wrong, before design starts.
- The design is done in exocad or Blender for Dental, depending on the indication.
- The lab receives files ready for milling or printing, with a note on points to check, such as a doubtful margin or a thin area.
- Changes requested after the check are made on the same case.
What to send and what comes back is detailed in outsourcing dental CAD design, wherever the lab is located.
What can be designed
Crowns and bridges in zirconia, lithium disilicate and printable materials, inlays and veneers, custom abutments and screw-retained crowns on Ti-bases, bars and full-arch frameworks on implants, printable models, splints and night guards, and the tooth setup for immediate loading cases. Implant work needs the exact implant system and components, so the design uses the right library.
What changes with someone in Bolzano
The design itself is done remotely, so a designer in Bolzano works like one in Milan or Munich. The difference is in everything around the file.
You can speak Italian or German with the person doing the work. Many South Tyrolean labs receive prescriptions in both languages, and a misunderstood note easily leads to a remake. When needed, we meet in the lab: to set up materials and parameters, for exocad training for the team, or to sort out a slow workstation. For rush cases such as immediate loading, dates and times are easier to agree with someone in the same time zone and holiday calendar.
How to start
The first step is a test case, ideally a normal case rather than a rush one, so both sides see how the files arrive, which settings the lab uses and what comes back. After a few cases, formats, preferred materials and turnaround are set.
For a lab without its own CAD department, a dental lab in Bolzano without CAD explains how to start. Clinics that want to know how their scanner connects to the lab will find the path in digital workflow for dental clinics in South Tyrol.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need to be nearby to outsource CAD design?
No, files travel online and the design is done remotely. Being nearby helps when a meeting in person is needed, when the workflow is set up in the lab, for training, or to solve a problem on a workstation.
In which language do we work?
Italian or German, as the lab prefers, and English too. In South Tyrol many labs work with clinics in both languages, and notes and prescriptions can stay in the language they arrive in.
Which software is used for the design?
exocad and Blender for Dental. Files come back in the formats the lab uses in production, for example STL for milling and printing, with the data the CAM reads.