A new multi-degree of freedom measuring system (MDFM) for the geometric errors including horizontal straightness, vertical straightness, pitch, roll, and yaw simultaneous measurement on the moving axes of a high precision coordinate measuring machine has been developed. The measuring principle is based on the combination that a new positioning method in which charge coupled device (CCD) array is used as a positioning detector instead of quadrant photo diode and the Fourier phase shift algorithm is used to calculate the geometric errors in frequency domain. Experimental results show that the system accuracy of 1tm in the straightness error measurements and 0.5 arc sec in the angular error measurements can be achieved.