Computer numerical control (CNC) machine tool is a key indicator of the level of the country's manufacturing assembly industry, and its machining accuracy is a key element which reflects the performance and the level of machine tools. Error compensation is one of the main ways and trends to improve the processing accuracy of CNC machine tools. Rapid and accurate measurement of CNC machine volumetric errors is the premise and key of the error compensation and the accuracy improvement of CNC machine tools. How to rapidly and accurately measure all kinds of errors of machine tools has become a research hotspot and focus in the measurement field at home and abroad. Currently, there are many kinds of measuring methods and measuring instruments in this field. Focusing on the measuring instrument and method, as well as the measurement strategy, this work summarizes volumetric geometric errors measurement methods and instruments for CNC machine tools. The principle, pros and cons of them are anaylized and the trends in the fields are discussed.