The length, measuring speed and direction of probe were changed respectively to measure the pretravel error of a trigger probe made in China, and the error compensation data table was established. In view of the obvious anisotropy of the trigger probe caused by the tripod structure, a fast method for determining the orientation of tripod support was established, which combinied “offline error data table” with “online direction determination”. Experiments results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the accuracy of probe and the calibration efficiency of onmachine measurement improves by more than 90%.