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Introduction: Knowledge of dental anatomy is of utmost important, without which professional dental practice may not be successful. Teaching dental anatomy to students in majority of colleges is usually done through lectures, extracted natural teeth, assisted with wax carving in practical sessions.

Objective: To analyse the perceived importance of tooth carving using a wax block during their BDS curriculum.

Materials and Method: A cross-sectional study was designed involving dental students studying in different dental colleges in Kathmandu. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data. The results were analysed for descriptive statistics using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 16 software.

Result: A total of 260 dental students participated in this study. Among them 255 (98.1 %) did tooth carving in their practical session of oral anatomy. Mostly they used wax blocks for carving. Two-hundred thirteen (81.9 %) of respondents suggested the need of live demonstration assisted with videos to carve teeth better.

Conclusion: Although learning dental anatomy by carving of teeth using wax block is an age old time tested standard method and would definitely help to correctly identify and replicate the morphology of teeth both during their student life and professional practice. Newer, more interesting, innovative, interactive and clinically relevant adjuvant teaching, learning methods such as computer-aided learning and others should also be considered which help the students learn better and with ease.

Carving: dental anatomy; tooth morphology.