Along the lines of technology NextEngine presents a new high-resolution full-color 3D scanner that sits on your desktop. 

2008 will include built-in support for the NextEngine scanner and several features for handling scanned data. The Desktop 3D Scanner includes the software, ScanStudio, which is included in SolidWorks Office Premium 2008.  You can take physical samples and bring them into SolidWorks as accurate, high-resolution 3D reference models.  SolidWorks and NextEngine have jointly developed new native file formats that let you take scanned models directly into SolidWorks.