The design method of cutting head of roadheader was studied in this paper, and aimed at the deficiency of the traditional design way, an intelligent design and optimization methods were proposed. This method took secondary development of ANSYS based on the Visual C++2010, and achieved the input of design parameters on the foreground interface. By using the APDL parametric design language we realized the parametric modeling, parametric analysis and parameter display results with the design parameters, and the optimization and adjustment of the structure of cutting head can be carried out according to the results of finite element analysis. With this design method can achieve intelligent design and optimization of cutting head with different coal geological conditions and different cutting conditions, which will greatly improve the cutting head design level.