dental model

[Anonymous]

hi, 

i would like to make a solid dental model with teeth from a intra oral scan, and a base preformed.
is it a easy way with meshmixer to do this , like in the picture ?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

1. There seem to be intersecting surfaces at the rear region. Discard intersecting regions to get two clean boundaries not intersecting the other.

2. Make sure that each object owns a single open boundary: Run ANALYSIS/Inspector on each object: If there's a single blue marker pointing to the outer boundary all is fine. If there are more markers repair the interior issues by double clicking all marker spheres BUT the one pointing to the outer boundary.

3. Activate both objects (press Shift while clicking on the second object) and do EDIT/Combine.

4. Go to SELECT, SelectAll and run Edit/Join to build a surface at the gap.

[Anonymous]

This is exactly what i was looking for. thank you 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Its easy, follow these few steps in the video https://youtu.be/9dIk2ek5pKc if you want to hollow it then check this one https://youtu.be/woj17XyFSRs

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

I have been using meshmixer for some time and I have an issue while making hollow models.

I import raw open-shell dental models, smooth the boundaries, extrude (constant + Flat) and Inspect for any missing links.

Thereafter, I hollow the models and plane cut but as soon as I plane cut the models, I get hollow double boundaries, dental model. I am attaching images for your reference.  For some models, I keep going back and forth with the plane cut until I get those solid boundaries but for some, I do not and end up printing solid models.

Please guide me so that I can avoid this issue.

[Anonymous]

There seems to be some self intersection at the exterior shell resulting from your extrusion step :

Check the resulting boundaries if the blue open boundaries show some loops like I scribbled in blue.

If there are such loops use SCULPT's smooth brush to smooth these regions before using PlaneCut. PlaneCut's infill isn't able to handle self intersections of the mesh.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your answer. However, before using SMOOTH BOUNDARY, I used to SCULPT with ROBUST SMOOTH, followed by extrusion then hollow and then plane cut but ended up having same issue.

I have done the same in this stl file, instead of SMOOTH BOUNDARY, I have sculpted the entire raw open stl file with ROBUST SMOOTH making sure there are no open edges but still upon plane cut I am getting the same issue. can you please have a look at the screenshots and guide me what am I doing wrong. I really appreciate your assistance and help.

[Anonymous]

Can't find any problematic issue in the images...

Can you upload the file to some file sharing service and send me the download link? Think it might be too big to attach it here as a zipped file.

[Anonymous]

Please click here to download the STL file 

Thank you for your help.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the file.

Yep there's still some self intersection in the extruded surface which makes PlaneCut fail:

SELECT it with AlowBackFaces enabled:

Delete the region hitting X and run ANALYSIS/Inspector to repair.

Now PlaneCut is able to fill:

[Anonymous]

Perfect. Thank you for your help. It really helped me solve this issue. If you don't mind I am sending you the raw STL file and I was wondering if you can suggest to me some straightforward steps in order to make hollow models. What steps would you recommend?

[Anonymous]

Hi, check out this video and the comment i posted
https://youtu.be/woj17XyFSRs

[octavimckay7_4_2]

I've worked on similar projects using intraoral scans, and the key is really getting clean boundaries before combining the teeth and the base. Meshmixer can definitely do it, but as the first reply mentions, any intersecting surfaces need to be resolved first. I usually run the Inspector tool and carefully repair all interior markers—this makes the join much smoother.

One thing that helped me was visiting Burwood Diamond Dental in Burwood to see how they prepare their 3D printed models for patient cases. Seeing their workflow gave me practical insights into aligning the teeth accurately on a preformed base and avoiding gaps or mesh errors.

Once you have clean boundaries and properly aligned objects, combining and joining them in Meshmixer becomes much easier, and the final model stays true to the scan. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but the results are worth it.