The cutting pattern for membrane structures obtained by using the geodesic line method or flattening technique does not allow the actual stresses in the structures to be specified. As a result, the occurrence of surface wrinkles may form under service loading. In this paper, a method for determining an optimum cutting pattern which accounts for the designed stresses of the membrane structures is presented. Using the displacements of the 3‐D surface as the key variables, the method proposed utilizes a nonlinear analysis technique based upon the second Piola‐Kirchhoff stress tensor, Green strain tensor and Saint Venant‐Kirchhoff hyperelastic material. The genetic algorithm is also adopted to solve the optimization problem. To verify the validation of the existing method, a cone shape membrane structure was analyzed. By using the proposed method, the deviation of the actual membrane stresses from the assumed design stresses could be reduced.An updated version of this article was published on 19 October 2015....