Optical measurement technologies such as laser scanning and photogrammetry have been widely used in the courses of historic building survey in recent years, but they are mainly considered as a supplementary method to hand measurement instead of an innovation to graphical representation. The article presents the teaching reform emphasizing the rationality of survey technology, taking historic building survey course of architecture specialty in Nanjing Tech University as an example. The teaching objectives are learning historic buildings and surveying techniques, mastering optical measurements and hand measurements, and drawing with multi-methods. The teaching procedure consists of lecture, trial, field measurement, data processing, and graphical representation. Accuracy, level of development and team collaboration are regarded as criteria of assessment. The results are illustrated with four cases:integrating raster imageries with 3D models, validating hand-measured data with optical measurement, mapping the diseases of ceiling paintings, and a GIS-based thematic map of historic buildings in Nanjing. The course reform echoes the innovation of measurement technology to conventional surveying of historic buildings and graphical representation of different architectural types. It exposes students to practical measurement technologies, and promotes them to realize the connection between different branches of architecture with the media digital technology.