This is a super interesting topic to work on! There's an academic initiative which does exactly this, it's called the Digital Historical Architectural Research

This is a super interesting topic to work on! There's an academic initiative which does exactly this, it's called the Digital Historical Architectural Research and Material Analysis or DHARMA [0] for short (it's at the University of Notre Dame). Figuro3D [1] is a startup (also out of Notre Dame) which borrows a lot from DHARMA and applies it to 3D printing. [0]: http://architecture.nd.edu/research-publications/dharma/ http://architecture.nd.edu/research-publications/dharma/ [1]: http://www.figuro3d.com/ http://www.figuro3d.com/ Edit: formatting