Provided is a wire electric discharge machine in which workpiece attaching and detaching unit attaches and detaches a workpiece to and from workpiece fixing unit, machining-reference-part detecting unit detects the position of a machining reference part of the workpiece, workpiece-positioning executing unit positions the workpiece in a position where the workpiece does not collide with machining-reference-part measuring unit, measurement-positioning executing unit positions the machining-reference-part measuring unit in a predetermined measurement start position, the machining-reference-part measuring unit measures the position of the machining reference part of the workpiece, and machining-reference-part-measurement executing unit executes a position measuring operation for the machining reference part of the workpiece using the machining-reference-part measuring unit.