The block assembly of ship consists of a series of heat processes such as cutting, bending, welding residual stress relaxation and fairing With the fast development of computers, the thermal elasto-plastic analysis method has become a versatile tool for practical applications in the ship production. If numerical analysis is proved to be an advantageous tool to predict the residual deformation due to various heat processes, the optimum methods which can remove the welding distortion can be presented at each assembly stage, which will result in great progress in improving the accuracy of block assembly. In order to minimize the weld-induced angular distortion in thick weldments, this paper proposes the optimum groove design for various plate thickness as the distortion control method. The validity of this method has been substantiated by a number of numerical simulations and experiments.