Taking preform design of an axisymmetric forging with large ratio of height to diameter as an example, aiming to achieve multiple-target optimization design for pre-forging steps, a new preform method was put forward. Proceeding from the shape of final forging, numerical simulation was based on Deform-3D.By forward design, geometric parameter of each pre-forging step was preliminarily calculated. Taking full consideration of cavity filling, decrease of final forging force, increase of deformation uniformity and reduction of maximum material damage, the parameters of each preform step were debugged conversely and optimized from final forging step. A comparison was made between the simulation result and the experiment result. The experimental results show that the reverse technology is instructional to preform step design of multi-step forming.