A method has been developed to generate optimal ship forms for minimum total resistance. In addition to the surface friction, the boundary layer and wake are also considered for the viscous effect. The wave resistance is approximated by the Michell integral from the "thin" ship theory. The optimisation procedure has been applied to the bow and stern forms as well as the full length of a ship hull. The boundary layer and wake are first computed, and an artificially displaced ship hull is introduced by laying the displacement thickness of boundary layer and wake over a parent ship hull. A nonlinear programming problem is formulated and solved for the optimal displaced ship offsets of minimum total resistance. Then the displaced offsets are converted to the ship offsets to given the optimal ship form. The total resistance and wave patterns generated by the optimised ship hull at a specified Froude number are computed. The display of computer visualisation with the detailed geometrical characteristics of optimal ship hull with associated wave patterns gives a very direct view of theoretical results for evaluation which will help the designers to improve the ship hull form design. The whole process has been incorporated into a software package: OPSHIP. Examples are illustrated in this paper.