In engineering applications,some components are composed of doubly curved shapes. It is of significance for investigations on processing strategy of complicated doubly curved surface in laser forming. However,as a dieless forming technique,laser heating paths are not necessarily directly related with the desired shape,which raises the degree of difficulty for process planning. To acquire high accurate shape with doubly curved in laser forming,a new design approach is proposed to determine path planning and process parameters based on the studies of cross heating and pre-bend in this paper. Firstly,a strain field required to obtain a desired shape from a planar shape is obtained. Secondly,the heating paths are planned in the top and the bottom surface separately. Thirdly,the basic relationship databases of the flat and curved plate between process parameters and residual plastic strain and between process parameters and strain ratio of the top and bottom surfaces are built,respectively. Finally,the heating condition is determined according to the required strain field and the basic relationship databases. The experimental result based on the above process strategy shows that the laser forming shape is approximately consistent with the desirable shape.