What to Send With a Digital Crown & Bridge Case: the Complete Checklist
Digital submission is fast until something is missing - then one forgotten field costs a day. Here is everything a crown & bridge case should carry when it leaves your office, and the reason for each item.
Short answer: a complete digital crown & bridge case has four layers - the scan files, the prescription, the occlusal and shade records, and the clinical photographs. Leave out any layer and the lab either guesses or waits. Guessing produces remakes; waiting produces the "my case is stuck" email. Here is what each layer should contain and why.
This checklist is written from the intake desk's point of view. We review incoming digital cases every day, and the same handful of gaps shows up again and again - not because dentists are careless, but because scanner software makes it easy to press send and prescription templates rarely ask for everything. Print this list, keep it by the scanning station, and your cases will stop starting with a question.
Layer 1: the scan files
The scan is the geometry, and geometry is the part nobody can fix remotely later. Three rules make scans usable every time.
- Open export, not just the native file. STL is the lingua franca; PLY or native formats from 3Shape, Medit, iTero and CEREC also travel well when the lab supports the platform. If you are unsure whether your scanner connects, ask before the first case rather than after.
- Scan the preparation and at least one tooth beyond it on each side, with clear margins. Under-scanned margins are the number one cause of design guesswork.
- Include the opposing arch and a buccal bite registration. An articulation that the software can actually use - not just a screenshot - decides whether the occlusal anatomy is designed or invented.
One more habit that costs nothing: re-check the margin line in the scanner software before export. A margin that looks blurry at 100% magnification on your screen will look worse at the design station, and the question that comes back will cost you a day.
Layer 2: the prescription
The prescription is where most cases quietly fail. Not because fields are missing entirely, but because they are filled ambiguously - "zirconia", with nothing about grade or translucency; "normal contacts", which means different things on a molar and a lateral incisor. A prescription that survives intake review answers these fields specifically:
| Field | What a complete answer looks like | What gets asked back if it's vague |
|---|---|---|
| Restoration type & material | Three-unit monolithic zirconia bridge, high-translucency grade | "Which zirconia?" - grades differ in strength and aesthetics |
| Margins | Supragingival 0.5mm, equigingival on 36 | "Where should we place the margin line?" |
| Occlusal scheme | Group function on working side, no guidance change | "Do you want anatomy kept from the virtual wax-up?" |
| Contacts & embrasures | Slightly light on 45-46, open embrasure distal of 44 | "How tight is 'normal' for you?" |
| Shade | VITA 3D-Master 2M2, stump 3M1 on 35, see photos | "Which shade system, and what is the preparation colour?" |
| Special instructions | Patient grinds; request 1.5mm occlusal thickness minimum | Usually nothing - this field is only forgotten when empty |
Notice the last row: special instructions are the cheapest field to fill and the most commonly empty. The grinding patient, the high smile line, the spouse with opinions - all of this belongs in writing, because it never survives a verbal hand-off.
Layer 3: occlusal and shade records
For single posterior units on stable bites, the scan plus prescription is often enough. The cases that need more are predictable, so plan for them:
- Full-arch or multi-unit work: a physical or digital bite registration in centric relation, plus anterior guidance information if the guidance is changing.
- Aesthetic zone work: stump shade (the prepared tooth's own colour) for every preparation - a veneer prescribed in B1 on a dark stump does not come out B1.
- Anything where the adjacent teeth matter: photos, covered in the next layer, because the shade is matched to reality, not to a shade tab photographed badly.
Layer 4: photographs
Photographs are the aesthetic record. Four shots cover almost every crown & bridge need: a full-face smile, a retracted frontal view of the arch, a close-up of the preparation with the shade tab beside it, and a close-up of the adjacent teeth whose characterisation the new unit should echo. Two technical points decide whether these photos are useful: diffuse daylight (not the overhead operatory light, which warms everything) and the shade tab in the same frame at the same focal distance. A tab photographed separately tells the lab nothing about how the camera lied.
What actually goes missing
The pattern in that chart is worth sitting with: the top causes are communication fields, not technology. Practices that adopted a two-minute pre-send review - shade written, bite attached, margins visible - cut their intake questions to nearly zero. The scanner did not change; the checklist did.
A two-minute pre-send review
| Check | Pass condition |
|---|---|
| Scan quality | Margins crisp at zoom; one tooth beyond the preparation on each side |
| Articulation | Opposing arch scanned; bite registration imports without warnings |
| Prescription | Material + grade, margin location, occlusal instructions all filled |
| Shade | Shade system named; stump shade for aesthetic work; tab in frame |
| Attachments | Photos attached for anything anterior or multi-unit |
Standing instructions: fill the prescription once, reuse it forever
There is a cheaper version of all this diligence, and it is the standing instruction sheet. Every lab that takes repeat volume seriously maintains an account preference profile - margin style, contact tightness, anatomical preferences, cementation notes, shade habits. The first case pays the setup cost; every case after inherits it. So when your lab asks intake questions, answer them once *and then ask to see the profile they were recorded into*. A profile you can inspect is an asset; answers that live in an email thread are archaeology waiting to happen when your coordinator is on holiday.
The profile also changes what your per-case prescription has to carry. With standing instructions in place, the prescription shrinks to what is genuinely case-specific: which tooth, which material, which shade, what changed since last time. "Same as case 4712 but on 35, contacts slightly lighter" is a complete and excellent prescription - *because* case 4712 exists somewhere as structured data. Practices that reduce prescription effort this way send more information per case, not less; the standing sheet carries the constants so the prescription can carry the variables.
One warning from the intake desk: profiles decay without maintenance. Materials get renamed, preferences get revised, staff changes at your practice bring new habits. Review your account profile once or twice a year - a five-minute read that prevents the strange category of remake where the lab did exactly what you asked for last year.
What happens after you press send
Worth knowing what a good intake process does with your files, because it explains the questions that come back. A complete case gets a completeness review within a working day: scan integrity, articulation check, prescription sanity, component verification if it is implant work. If something is genuinely unusable, you want the lab to say so immediately - a same-day "the bite on case 4712 did not import, please re-export" is a good lab behaving well, not a problem. The alternative is discovering the same fact a week later with a delivery date attached.
Then design starts. On multi-unit or aesthetic cases, expect a design preview with a short list of confirmations - margin placement, contact design, anatomical style. Answering that preview quickly is the single highest-leverage thing you do for your own turnaround, a point we cover in detail in our post on turnaround arithmetic.