A system (10) and method by which an orthodontic appliance (25) is automatically designed and manufactured from digital lower jaw and tooth shape data of a patient provides for the scanning of the mouth of a patient (12), preferably from a model (20) of the patients mouth, to produce a three-dimensional digitized model (26) of the shapes of the patients teeth and their positions in the patients mouth. Then a computer (30) calculates the post-treatment positions of the teeth and produces three-dimensional images of the teeth. individually and in their calculated positions. An interactive computer link between the doctors office (11) and the appliance manufacturing facility (13) allows an orthodontist (14) to control the patients archform and to modify the suggested computer-determined positions and orientations of the teeth in six degrees of freedom, and to experiment with new positions, extractions, over-corrections and other variations, with the computer recalculating the tooth positions with high precision for the approval of the orthodontist.
