In order to make dental implant surgery successful, it is important to perform proper planning for dental implant placement. In this paper, we propose a decent approach to dental implant placement planning based on geometric processing of 3D models of jawbones, a nerve curve and neighboring teeth around a missing tooth. Basically, the minimum enclosing cylinders of the neighboring teeth around the missing tooth are properly used to determine the position and direction of the implant placement. The position is computed according to the radii of the cylinders and the center points of their top faces. The direction is computed by the weighted average of the axes of the cylinders. For a cylinder whose axis passes the position along the direction, its largest radius and longest length are estimated such that it does not interfere with the neighboring teeth and the nerve curve, and they are used to select the size and type of an implant fixture. From the geometric and spatial information of the jawbones, the teeth and the fixture, we can construct the 3D model of a surgical guide stent which is crucial to perform the drilling operation with ease and accuracy. We have shown the validity of the proposed approach by performing the finite element analysis of the influence of implant placement on bone stress distribution. Adopted in 3D simulation of dental implant placement, the approach can be used to provide dental students with good educational contents. It is also expected that, with further work, the approach can be used as a useful tool to plan for dental implant surgery.