Question 1

What is SmartCAD?

Accepted Answer

SmartCAD is SmileShape's AI-assisted dental design tool that helps technicians create prosthetic restorations from validated intraoral scans. It proposes margins and anatomy that the technician reviews, adjusts, and approves, accelerating the design work and helping labs address the shortage of trained CAD designers.

Question 2

What types of restorations can SmartCAD design?

Accepted Answer

SmartCAD currently specializes in full-arch denture design, proposing complete prosthetic designs from validated scan data for technician review. The AI identifies key anatomical landmarks and proposes margins; the technician reviews, adjusts, and approves the design before manufacturing. SmileShape is actively expanding SmartCAD's capabilities to cover additional restoration types.

Question 3

How fast can SmartCAD propose a design?

Accepted Answer

SmartCAD can propose a full-arch denture design in approximately 2 minutes for the technician to review and approve. This is dramatically faster than traditional manual CAD design, which can take 30 minutes to over an hour per case. This speed allows labs to handle significantly more cases per day.

Question 4

How does SmartCAD reduce costs?

Accepted Answer

SmartCAD reduces CAD design costs by up to 60% by accelerating the labor-intensive design steps technicians perform. Labs that currently outsource denture design (often paying $30-$40 per arch) can bring design in-house with SmartCAD. It also reduces the need to hire and train additional CAD designers, which is increasingly difficult due to the industry-wide shortage of trained technicians.

Question 5

Does SmartCAD replace my CAD designers?

Accepted Answer

No, SmartCAD is designed to augment your existing team, not replace them. It accelerates routine design steps for technician review, freeing your skilled designers to focus on complex cases that require human expertise and judgment. This lets your lab scale case volume without proportionally scaling headcount.

Question 6

What file formats does SmartCAD work with?

Accepted Answer

SmartCAD accepts standard dental CAD file formats including STL, PLY, and OBJ. The output designs are compatible with common dental manufacturing workflows, whether you're milling or 3D printing your prosthetics. SmartCAD integrates with the SmileShape platform, so files flow seamlessly from SmartScan validation to SmartCAD design.

Question 7

How does the technician review SmartCAD's proposals?

Accepted Answer

SmartCAD proposes designs from AI trained on dental anatomy; the technician reviews and approves each one. Every proposal includes margin and contour suggestions that your designers review and adjust before sending to manufacturing, so final quality always meets your lab's standards under human control.

Question 8

Can SmartCAD handle full-arch implant cases?

Accepted Answer

Yes. SmartCAD is specifically designed for full-arch cases, including implant-supported dentures. It processes the scan data, identifies implant positions and tissue landmarks, and proposes a complete prosthetic design for technician review and approval. Full-arch cases, which are among the most time-consuming to design manually, are where SmartCAD delivers the greatest time and cost savings.

AI-Assisted Denture Design

From Validated Scan to Finished Denture

SmartCAD

From Upload to Approved Denture Design

The SmileShape Difference

Traditional Workflow

SmileShape Workflow

SmartCAD FAQ