To calibrate a non-contact measurement system more precisely,the orientation error compensation of a three-axis turntable for calibration was investigated in this paper.The factors causing the orientation error were analyzed,then the topological structures and low-order body arrays of multi-body system were illustrated based on the basic principle of multi-body system kinematics.An orientation error model was built by deducing the operator of two adjacent bodies in advance,and the error model was just the function of angles of average lines of three axes.The orientation law about the effect of each factor on the orientation error was addressed by simulation results.The method to measure parameters of the error model was introduced.Results of error compensation experiments verify the validity of the proposed algorithm.