An important component of a cooling tower is an axial fan, and there happens distortion in its shape which brings significant loss of efficiency. In this paper, a surface profile measuring system for large size axial fan of cooling towers is developed. A laser sensor is used as a measuring device and aluminum profiles and stepping motors are engaged into the system as frame structure and driving devices respectively. The measuring data are compared to the design data to compute the distortion of the axial fans. Two types of errors, axial and twist errors, are used to represent the precision of axial fan distortion. Genetic algorithm is used to solve the optimization problem during computing the precision. Results are displayed three dimensionally in a solid-modeler as well as 2-D drawings to help users find it with ease.