In this paper, an application-oriented approach to piercing analysis in automatic forging simulation by the rigid-viscoplastic finite element mehtod is presented. In the presented approach, the accumulated damage is traced and the piercing instant is determined when the accumulated damage reaches the critical damage value. A method of obtaining the critical damage value by comparing the tensile test result with the analysis one is given. The presented approach is verified by experiments and applied to automatic simulation of a sequence of 6-stage forging processes.