Mike Skramstad The hardest tooth to design in the mouth IMO is a lateral....
I thought I would give a couple tips to help with some common mistakes that I see with the planning and design of lateral incisors:
- Try to keep the lateral a little bit more triangular in shape
- It should always be inclined to the mesial (long axis) AND the rotated to the distal compared to the central. I hope this makes sense...the midfacial should not be coming right at you like the central, it should be pointing slightly distal.
- The Mesial line angle should be positioned more toward the center of the tooth than you might think (bigger mesial grind zone for those who have taken Level 4)
- It should be positioned on a facial plane slightly more lingual to the Central and the Canine (The distal lobe of the Central should be prominent over the mesial of the lateral)
- The mesial incisal embrasure should be larger than the Embrasure between the Centrals. The Distal incisal embrasure should be even larger than the mesial
- If you have space issues, always open up the distal incisal embrasure of the lateral to solve the spacing issue. Will help you maintain correct proportions
And here is a crown on #7 to illustrate this concept:
I still do most all of my anterior work in Biocopy at this point. Keep these 6 "checkpoints" in mind when doing your mockups or communicating with your lab for a diagnostic waxup. Hope it helps!
