A new evaluation procedure for calculating the Jacobian elliptic parameter is presented. This procedure is useful in calculating the trajectory for cnoidal wave generation. Upon specification of water depth, the wave height and either the wave period or the wavelength, the presented algorithm uses the Newton-Raphson method and the arithmetic and geometric-mean scales to calculate the profile directly, without trial and error procedures or look-up in tables. It is shown that the algorithm provides equally accurate result as the ad hoc methods previously used.