How We Created Our Own CAD Software

‘I don’t know anything about coding.’ That was my response the first time Dr. Wendy Clark, a prosthodontist at the University of North Carolina dental school, asked me to write CAD software that would help her students learn how to virtually wax up a crown. Since the school would require about 80 seats/licenses for each of its students, the mainstream 3D software packages were out of the school’s budget and Dr. Clark was seeking a less expensive training tool for her students.

As an adjunct faculty member at the school, Dr. Clark and I had worked closely together for years on many complicated cases and I had experience using the popular CAD packages, but coding? That was out of my comfort zone.

Then the pandemic hit and work came to a halt…so when Dr. Clark asked again, I agreed; I had a lot of downtime and needed a project. Since I knew about Blender—a free, open source CAD software commonly used by 3D animators and...