Today's playbook
Surgical Guide Design Software: Running a Design Service
Surgical guide design software for small dental labs launching or standardizing a guide design service, production-tested end to end.
For Small Dental Labs
This cookbook is written for small dental labs that already have some form of digital workflow and want to launch or standardize a surgical guide design service. It is practical, step-by-step, and based on how GuideMia dental implant software and the Cympha platform are actually used in production.
This document focuses only on implant surgical guides. A separate cookbook is available for clear aligners.
1. What you need to start a surgical guide design service
To operate a surgical guide design service, you need five fundamental components: software, collaboration, case management, manufacturing, and training/support.
A) Surgical guide design software (lab side)
GuideMia Implant Master — sold in three tiers: Starter, Studio and Enterprise
- Used by your in-house designers or engineers
- Starter covers the core workflow: CBCT/DICOM processing, implant planning with full control of depth/angulation/prosthetic positioning, restoration-driven workflows, surgical guide design, and unlimited export of manufacturing-ready STL and restoration models
- Studio adds AI segmentation of CBCT volumes, zygomatic implant planning, and bone reduction guides
- Enterprise adds prosthesis guides, and combined guides for partially edentulous and full-arch cases
GuideMia Implant Master is FDA 510(k) cleared (K121466) and built under an ISO 13485 quality system.
B) Implant planning and review software (clinic / doctor side)
Cympha Studio (studio.cympha.com) lets clinicians open the implant plan in any browser, review positions, and adjust placement if needed. Studio is where the plan is viewed and edited — the approval itself is recorded in Cympha, on the case's Review and Approve page, so the clinician sees the files and the lab slip before signing off. Designed to be simple and fast, with no installation required on the doctor's side.
C) Case Management, Sharing & Communication
Cympha (app.cympha.com) is the platform where you run the design service. One workflow handles:
- Case submission portals for doctors
- File upload (CBCT, scans, photos)
- Status tracking, case chat, and an append-only case event log spanning 22 event types — every status change, every file added or removed, every label, comment and approval, in order and permanently
- A fixed role catalogue: each person picks one role when they sign up and it does not change afterwards; lab staff join by requesting the lab manager's approval, and the manager holds the roster
- Read-only colleague sharing by email, for anyone who only needs to look at the case
- Per-case billing and invoicing
Cympha Studio (studio.cympha.com) is the browser-based 3D viewer for sharing plans with clinicians and patients — interactive 3D model viewing, snapshot/bookmark/annotation, 4D playback for orthodontics and multi-stage visualization for implants, no installation required on the recipient's side.











