During machining of dies and molds with sculptured surfaces. the cutter contact area changes continuously and results in cutting force variation. In order to implement cutting force prediction model into a CAM system, an effective and fast method is necessary. In this paper. a new method is proposed to predict mean cutting force. The cutter contact area in the spherical part of the cutter is obtained using Z-map, and expressed by the grids on the cutter plane orthogonal to the cutter axis. New empirical cutting parameters were defined to describe the cutting force in the spherical part of cutter. Before the mean cutting force calculation, the cutting force density in each grid is calculated and saved to force map on the cutter plane. The mean cutting force in an arbitrary cutter contact area can be easily calculated by summing up the cutting force density of the engaged grid of the force map. The proposed method was verifed through the slotting and slanted surface machining with various inclination angles. It was shown that the mean force can be calculated fast and effectively through the proposed method for any geometry including sculptured surfaces with cusp marks and holes.