There have been substantial improvements in measurement systems in order to meet
fluctuating market demands. This rapid change and development in measurement technology
has primarily been governed by demands of accuracy and precision from aerospace,
automotive and other manufacturing industries. Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs)
available with different technologies and configurations has efficiently been fulfilling
customer demands for more than a decade. Though, current CMMs can meet needs of rapid and
increased demands of customers to a greater extent but still there is lot of scope for
improvement and development in CMMs. The globalization of manufacturing has resulted in
development of variety of complex products and miniaturization of mechanical components.
The technology of micro/nano-scale 3D measurement is still a bottleneck for industries.
Therefore, precise and accurate system which is flexible enough to deal with complexities
of parts and micro & nano range products has to be investigated. In this paper,
comprehensive review concerning CMMs with capabilities to measure micro/nano features has
been presented. This work has also discussed different methods to estimate measurement
uncertainty, as well as performance evaluation of CMMs. Moreover, novel concepts such as
intelligent CMM, multi-sensor CMM, virtual CMM have been presented.