This paper presents a new method for planar development of the 3D surfaces of a shoe upper. The 3D surface is first faceted into triangular elements and then roughly laid down on a 2D plane. Next, the nodal points of elements are repositioned by a refinement technique that minimizes the geometric errors. Even after elements have been refined by minimizing geometric errors, the resulting 2D shape still has some strain energy that needs to be reduced by a relaxation process. Hence, these elements are then used as an initial guess for further optimization during which the finite element inverse method is used to minimize the total strain energy. In fact, the two-step optimization technique not only can prevent the divergence of solutions (e.g., interferences between elements) but also yields a more reliable result. The method has been implemented as a module of the shoe design system by which a prototype shoe can be designed and manufactured more precisely and quickly.