Measurement protocols for hand anthropometry have been studied for ergonomic product design. The present study developed a 3D semi-automatic measurement protocol (3D-SAMP) which semi-automatically measures various hand dimensions using a 3D scanner. The 3D-SAMP was compared with the conventional direct measurement method (DMM) to examine its effectiveness. The 3D-SAMP consists of (1) fabricating a plaster cast of the hand, (2) placing landmarks on the plaster hand, (3) scanning the plaster hand with a 3D scanner, (4) identifying automatically the positions of the landmarks on the digital hand, and (5) extracting automatically hand anthropometric measurements (lengths, widths, thicknesses, and circumferences). An evaluation experiment conducted in the study found the 3D-SAMP preferred to the DMM in terms of reliability (the number of dimensions exceeding the variability criteria SD=2 mm and CV=5% : 3D-SAMP =2 and DMM=24) and ease of measurement (3D-SAMP=5.2 and DMM=4.3 out of 7). The 3D-SAMP can be applied to ergonomic design of a hand-held product.