Modela is a 3d carving machine. It's essentially a computer controlled vertical mill. You can retrofit an existing mill to do the same task. It's just expensive.
What bigfrit is talking about is probably 3d printer. Basically, you have a 3d object on PC, and slice them in a constant pitch to obtain many section cut images, then print them on a surface, filled with powders that react with water from the printer nozzle. It keeps stacking the section images to complete the object.
It's a part of so called rapid prototyping. (try some google search.)
Another is to cut something with laser, and I've seen demo in person, but don't know much abut the technical stuff.
As far as I know, only Tamiya and Bandai is employing the rapid prototyping for sample models. The prototype of the Enzo kit, you saw in HLJ's show report was made that way.
I asked
http://www.toybuilders.com/ to make a part, and this is the result. Can you guess what it's for?
