Optical dimensional metrology has playing a long-term key role from high-precision engineering to large-scale industrial manufacturing. Various methods of optical dimensional metrology have been proposed and demonstrated to respond to the ever-growing industrial demands as well as fundamental science demands for the measurement precision and range. However, most of them demonstrated under laboratory conditions have a long way to go outside the laboratory. Here, we present a progress review on optical modulation technique-based dimensional metrology, which has already been used in real applications and has been commercialized. Amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) based dimensional measurement techniques are described with their operating principles, and recent progresses and applications in 3D imaging are presented in this review.