Abstract: The research and development of sheet metal forming is thought as a good way through which metallurgical industry will be developed to meet the needs of the revolution in material science and technology. Three stages of revolutionary developments in sheet metal forming industry have been differenciated. The mark of the first revolution is that sheet metal forming was operated with machines and dies in a factory instead of manual operation in a workshop) the second revolution is indicated by the assessment of process and formability derived from experiment,the study of theoritical formability and the foundation of cAE/FMS are the indications of the third revolutionary development in sheet metal forming. Since sheet metal forming, as a engineeing science, has got to marry sheet metal processing, a concept of SYSTEM ENGINEERING in sheet Metal （SESM） has been put forward,which covers: （a） sheet metal processing; （b） sheet metal forming;（c） coupling between metallugical processing（e.g. make-ing process, rollng process etc.） and forming process of metal.
Computer-aided analysis of formability and computer-aided optimization and modelling of forming process are reviewed, and their schedules are illustrated. Furthermore, the comprehensive structure of sheet metal forming as a independent subject is presented.