In order to account for the urban effect on meteorological fields and transport and dispersion of air contaminants, building-related parameters are often needed for urban canopy parameterizations in meteorological and air quality models. The majority of studies in the past have relied on in situ "measurements" of these parameters, a time-consuming and expensive process. Recently, 3D building databases have become more common for major cities worldwide. In this paper, we give an overview of computations we have performed for obtaining building morphological characteristics from 3D building databases for several southwest US cities, including average building height, standard deviation of building height, height histograms, plan area fraction, frontal area density, roughness length, displacement height, and sky view factor. Where possible, we compare our results with prior studies. We also correlate our building statistics with underlying landuse. Limitations associated with using 3D building databases are also discussed.