Starting from potential theory, this paper presents a new procedure for computing the hydrodynamic forces and six-degrees-of-freedom motion for a semi-submersible platform at an arbitrary heading in waves by using strip theory and linearized viscous damping hypothesis, taking the effects of the free surface and the interaction between main hulls into account. The differential equations of motion for the floating platform are formulated in a new way and the associated computer programs are developed. Comparisons between the theoretical computing results and the full-scale and model-scale experiments show that the present method gives more accurate results than those by previous methods. Starting from potential theory, this paper presents a new procedure for computing the hydrodynamic forces and six-degrees-of-freedom motion for a semi-submersible platform at an arbitrary heading in waves by using strip theory and linearized viscous damping hypothesis, taking the effects of the free surface and the interaction between main hulls into account. The differential equations of motion for the floating platform are formulated in a new way and the associated computer programs are developed. Comparisons between the theoretical computing results and the full-scale and model- scale experiments show that the present method gives more accurate results than those by previous methods.