Patent ID: 7578673

Claim:
A method of fabricating a dental template to position a plurality of brackets on a patient's teeth to move at least one of the teeth from an initial position to a subsequent position, the method comprising: providing a digital model of the patient's teeth in their initial positions; determining a target position for each of the brackets on the digital teeth model; creating a bracketed model comprising placing virtual representations of the brackets on the digital teeth model at the target positions; creating a scaled teeth model by scaling up the digital teeth model; locating the bracketed model within the volume of the scaled teeth model; generating a template model, the generating comprising removing a volume from the scaled teeth model corresponding to the volume of the located bracketed model so as to create teeth receiving cavities within the scaled teeth model, and further removing portions of the scaled teeth model so as to create a plurality of openings to the positions of the virtual brackets; and directly fabricating the dental template from the template model, wherein the template comprises multiple openings, each opening configured to guide a bracket into the target position on one of the patient's teeth after the template is placed over the patient's teeth.