A new special-purpose optical coordinate measuring machine(OCMM) was developed with the cylinder coordinates to realize full aperture testing of the optical aspherics in the stage of grinding and pre-polishing.The full-aperture of optical aspherics can be measured with testing several meridians point by point.In the aspect of hardware,the system was composed mainly by an ultra-precise air-rail for the linear motion,and a graduator for the rotary motion.In the aspect of software,for analyzing the mathematical model of a system,a new algorithm for the full-aperture testing of rotational-symmetric aspherics was astablised.The testing software and data-processing software were written on the VC++6.0 and Matlab platform respectively.The system is shown the better performance in the maximum measurement range of 600 mm,the maximum sag of 25 mm and the minimum sampling step of 1 mm.After the compensation of the systematic errorsthe accuracy is higher than 1 μm in full scale.The experimental results conclude that the optical coordinate measuring machine has a good universal and can satisfy requirement in the grinding and pre-polishing process for asphere testing.