Graphoepitaxy is a technique that has been demonstrated as a means for fashioning regions of single crystal semiconductors on amorphous substrates. In that earlier work the heating period was long (1 s or more) and the substrate needed to be held close to the melting point of the semiconductor. With a view to achieving three-dimensional integrated circuits, the authors have investigated the possibility using graphoepitaxy to yield device quality single crystal islands of silicon on an amorphous substrate without excessive heating of the underlying layers by using transient (< 1 ms) heating. A stationary laser pulse of 532 nm wavelength, 100 mu s duration, and 22 mu m diameter impinged on a 50 nm thick amorphous silicon film deposited on 12 nm thick SiO2 inverted pyramid template. We demonstrated successful graphoepitaxial orientation of crystallized silicon but only under conditions that gave excessive heating (>400 degrees C) of lower layers, thus indicating that this technique is impractical for three-dimensional integrated circuits.