A method 1000 of constructing generic tooth geometry from a collection of tooth samples (10 fig 3), comprises the steps providing S110 a database 40 of digitised like tooth samples (16 fig 1) from an analysis group, creating S140 a baseline model 42 from the tooth samples (16 fig 1), transforming the baseline model 42 to the database 40 to generate S150 a normalised database 44, applying principal component analysis S160 to the normalised database 44, extracting characteristic data relevant to one or more characteristics of the analysis group and determining one or more generic tooth geometries. The geometries may be used in the manufacture of dental implants 54 or associated tools (56 fig 7) such as a cutting head. The database 40 may be obtained using three dimensional slice tomography. The tooth samples (10 fig 3) may be represented as three dimensional meshes (34 fig 4). The baseline model 42 may be a standard mesh mapped onto the three-dimensional meshes using node to node comparison.
