Clinical workflow

How the application expects a case to run, and what it deliberately will not do for you.

The boundary

Diaco Studio is design software. It shapes geometry from measurements a practitioner takes and parameters a practitioner enters. It does not diagnose, it does not prescribe, and it does not approve a fit.

Three rules follow from that, and the software enforces all three:

• Wall thicknesses are entered, never suggested. There is no button that fills them in. The printed sockets that passed structural testing did so on the clinic's own recipe, and a plausible number written by software is worse than no number.
• Every export carries the disclaimer. Final approval rests with the certified prosthetist. This is on the report, in the export, and in the file.
• Recommendations are bounded and labelled. The insole studio can suggest parameter changes from a gait scan. Every one is a bounded delta over a size/weight/pathology preset, it says so, and low-confidence scans produce no automatic feature at all.

Socket: the four steps

Since v2.35 a socket is four steps, and with the stage assistant on each step is signed once: its stages run by themselves when the step opens, the practitioner reads them, answers what is asked, ticks what is to be checked, and signs -- all of the step's stages, or none. Going back to a step withdraws its signature and clears the steps after it. Signing does not move the studio on; the button at the bottom of the panel does.

1 · Scan

Accepts STL, OBJ, PLY up to the owner's size limit (200 MB by default). Cleanup keeps the largest component, welds duplicate vertices, removes degenerate faces, and aligns the limb so the distal end sits at z = 0 and the front faces +Y.

Read the warnings. kept_largest_of_N_components on a scan that should be one surface means the scan has holes or floating debris -- decide whether that matters before continuing.

Negative casts: tick the box. The orientation is flipped to produce the positive limb model. Getting this wrong produces a socket that is inside-out and will not be caught downstream.

The front of the limb. The anatomical frame reads anterior off the limb and says how sure it is. Look at the front view: the patella should face you. If it does not, turn the model (90 or 5 degrees at a time) and keep the turn -- it is saved as a new version of the scan, and the step is read again.

Measurements are on the same step: length, volume, distal section area, triangle count, watertight, the section circumference every 25 mm, and the change since this case's previous scan. This is the check that the scan is the patient. Compare at least two circumferences against tape measurements. Everything after this point trusts this geometry completely.

The intake -- body mass, activity, cause -- is asked once per case: a second design of the same case is offered the answers approved on the first, still to be checked and signed.

2 · Rectification

Landmarks first -- patellar tendon, fibular head, tibial crest, tibial tuberosity, distal tibia end, popliteal area, hamstrings. They are recorded with the design and appear in the report.

With the assistant on, this step also asks for the recipe the socket is built with (step 3). Nothing is chosen for you.

Then the brushes: relief removes material over pressure-sensitive structures, build-up adds it over load-tolerant ones. Global volume change scales the whole limb for a liner or for oedema.

Save the rectified version. The socket is generated from it, not from the raw scan. If you accept the limb as scanned, save it anyway -- that is the record of the decision.

3 · Socket build

• Recipe -- the clinic's own, or Diaco's two: Definitive -- house (the designed outer wall, the house trimline template, the owner's wall of 7 / 4.5 / 3.5 mm, the rim stroke, the reference adapter) and Check socket -- offset wall. Choosing one fills everything below; nothing is filled before it is chosen, the wall included. Saved under its own name, a Diaco recipe becomes the clinic's own copy, in the clinic's list only.
• Trimline -- the recipe's template laid out as points on the limb, a flat height, a drawn curve, or brushed. Everything above it is removed.
• Wall thickness -- distal, mid, brim. Yours: typed, or from the recipe you named.
• Rim stroke -- an outward reinforcement below the trim, part of the house recipe.
• Adapter -- on by default, its numbers from an adapter preset (the reference socket's own block, or the clinic's).

The simple view shows what a routine socket needs; Show advanced settings shows the rest. A field that differs from what the recipe or preset gave it is shown in either view with a dot that puts the named value back.

Generate takes a few seconds. The result is checked for a closed volume and repaired only if it fails; a healthy socket is never "repaired".

4 · Print export

The checks run by themselves on every socket built:

Printability reports overhang area, whether it fits a known bed, an estimated mass per material, and the measured wall thickness -- a real measurement, sampled by ray casting, not a ratio. If the mesh is not closed it says the wall was not measured rather than guessing.

Structure: the ISO 10328 estimate is an analytical estimate, not FEA. It models PA6-CF as isotropic and assumes steel inserts. It is a sanity check and it is not a substitute for physical testing.

STL, 3MF, and the report. Confirm final socket for customer marks the version as the case file's approved socket and charges the design fee once -- with the assistant on, only once the checks are signed. Iterating is free; approving twice does not charge twice.

Insole: the short path

Size, weight, pathology, side → Generate insole. Seven pathology presets resolve into concrete parameters; from there every one of the 44 is editable and the model updates live.

A gait scan (ZIP or PAYA from the pressure plate) refines the parameters. The archive is analysed in memory and discarded — the saved design, the patient profile and any processed geometry inside it are explicitly ignored, and the provenance block in the analysis says so. Only derived parameters are stored.

The fit gate must pass before you print: minimum thickness, wall angle, watertight, no non-manifold edges. It is shown as FIT PASS / FIT FAIL and in the diagnostics panel.

Then Patient record → save, approve, send to printer.

Left and right are exact mirrors. This has been verified to 0.0000 mm. If you ever receive a pair that is not, stop and report it — that is the failure mode with the worst consequences.

Batch build

For work designed outside the application. Point it at a day folder of patient subfolders, each containing Left-Insole-1.STL and Right-Insole-1.STL.

It reads the hardness from the folder name, finds the metatarsal pad, renders a preview, and writes an OrcaSlicer project beside the STLs. It refuses to overwrite an existing 3MF unless you tick the box.

Every pair it builds is filed as a clinical record — patient, case, two versions and a print order. It charges nothing: the design was not made here.

Charging

One fee per approved design, per product, taken from the clinic wallet. Nothing is charged for iterating, regenerating, reverting, or for a batch import.

Top up with a charge code from your supplier: owner panel or Charge wallet, paste the code. Codes are signed offline and work with no internet connection. A code can be redeemed once.

What is recorded

Every clinically meaningful action writes an event: uploads, rectifications, generations, approvals, orders, imports, charges. That log is what a technical file is built from. It is visible in the audit view and included in a backup.