Although a great deal of research has been carried out to solve the plate forming problem and to improve the effectiveness and productivity of the plate forming process, no practical way of automating the plate forming process has been proposed yet. Since characteristics of heating machines may vary, it is necessary to investigate the thermal deformation characteristics of the heating machine that will be used in the automation system its characteristics may be modified as new information about thermal deformation by heating becomes available. In this paper, experiments for line heating have been carried out to calculate the formula of predicting thermal deformation due to line heating with varying affecting parameters, and numerical study has been carried out to produce data beyond the range where a line heating test is impractical. Formulas of predicting transverse distortion and shrinkage have been proposed and derived, based on the present experimental and numerical works. This paper also illustrates how the formula has been modified as new experimental data are added.