According to the education goal for students in application-oriented university program of water conservancy and hydropower engineering, we make analyses on the course of Water Conservancy Project CAD, point out the problems with the current teaching, student assessment and students' drawing ability development modes, and make some suggestions on optimization of teaching materials, improvement of teaching mode and reform of student assessment mode. Through the reform, the educational idea of arousing students' enthusiasm, improving students' engineering quality, expanding students' knowledge and developing students' practical engineering ability has been developed; the teaching idea of CAD practice in combination with professional knowledge, open and project-oriented course teaching, and introduction of current mainstream hydraulic software has been worked out. The teaching practice in recent year shows that students' basic drawing ability and practical engineering ability have been improved.