Yet digital technologies are also important for projects that involve historic buildings, traditional materials, and old methods of construction. Designers have at their disposal an arsenal of analytic and descriptive tools that can enhance their understanding and stewardship of historic resources.
Documentation includes tools for measuring, drawing, and modeling existing buildings.
Investigation covers a slew of noninvasive and nondestructive testing techniques borrowed from fields such as manufacturing and civil engineering. Presentation includes innovative techniques for organizing and integrating old and new information in a single project. Any structure old enough to be considered historic even those built as recently as the 1960s was not designed with computers. Paper drawings, if they exist, may be in poor condition or unreliable. New drawings of historic buildings are often created so that they can be integrated into three- dimensional CAD models.