A dental restoration method that eliminates time-consuming, labor-intensive steps conventionally needed to fabricate molds, and thereby facilitates dental restorations in a shorter time, while reducing the discomfort and embarrassment sometimes associated with provisional restorations involves scanning an existing dental structure to generate a three-dimensional digital model of the existing dental structure, generating a three-dimensional digital model corresponding with a planned dental structure, and using an additive manufacturing process and apparatus (e.g., a 3-D printer) to fabricate the planned dental structure directly on the existing dental structure.
