We propose an improved point cloud global descriptor for recognition and grasping of similar workpieces. In the industry, different types of workpieces need to be recognized precisely in some intelligent systems. Deep learning requires a lot of preparation work, and it is difficult to adapt to the variety of workpieces. Furthermore, traditional descriptors based on point pairs cannot meet the requirements of identification. To solve this problem, the Outline Viewpoint Feature Histogram (Outline-VFH) descriptor remains part of the recognition ability of the Viewpoint Feature Histogram (VFH) descriptor and contains an extra outline description, which is established based on the oriented bounding box theory. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed descriptor, experiments were conducted on public dataset and some physical workpieces. The results show that the Outline-VFH is much better than VFH and some other descriptors on recognition and has great potential in vision-based robot grasping applications.