Fabrication pioneer production with lower cost and shorter cycle is a major mission for an enterprise, and rapid prototyping is a digital manufacture technology based on discrete stacking, which can meet the requirement. Rapid prototyping technology can be used to machine complex physical part directly from CAD data without any cutter or technical equipments. The paper summaries the working principle and compares the application fields, machining cost and process parameters for four typical rapid prototyping technology. Finally, the significant performance of rapid prototyping for modern industry is discussed, and the merits and faults is analysed. The investigation is beneficial for choosing an optimal forming process in industry.