In the past recent years, PMTs (Parallel Machine Tools) have drawn a lot of interests in many application domains, but only a few are doing productive work in industry. One of the reasons is the lack of design tools and environments. This paper mainly focuses on the research of an integrated digital development system for supporting the design of PMTs. At first, some difficulties in the process of designing PMTs are analyzed. Then the idea of the virtual product design system (VPDS) for PMTs is presented. The virtual manufacturing technology is used and the VPDS is primarily developed. The system is divided into three levels, which are respectively the system interface level, the application level and the data level. The application level consists of the mechanism design subsystem, structure design subsystem and operating capability analysis subsystem. Finally, a 3-DOF parallel mechanism with two degrees of translatory freedom and one degree of rotational freedom is designed and evaluated by using the VPDS. Then it has been manufactured quickly and put into physical work.