Retrieval of multimedia data is one of the most important issues in information reuse. As a key step of 3D modeling, 3D model retrieval has been deeply studied in recent years due to the widespread use of 3D modeling. Aiming at the current progress of 3D model retrieval technology, content-based retrieval technologies were firstly introduced. According to the extracted features, these technologies were divided into four categories:based on statistical data, based on geometric shape, based on topological structure and based on visual features. The main achievements, advantages and disadvantages of each technology were presented respectively. And then the semantic-based retrieval technologies considering semantic information to solve the "semantic gap" phenomenon were introduced. They were divided into three categories:relevance feedback, active learning and ontology technology. Then, the relationship and characteristics of these technologies were introduced. Finally, the future research directions of 3D model retrieval were concluded and proposed.