A method and apparatus able to quickly and accurately automatically produce machining programs for complicated shapes of products without being affected by the level of knowledge or experience of the operator. A cutting-condition determination processing unit (20) of an automatic programming apparatus (10) specifies required standard cutting condition data from the type of material and the types of processes designated by an input unit (12) in a cutting condition data table (24) stored in a storage unit (18), specifies the tool data corresponding to the types of tools designated by the input unit in the tool data table (26) stored in the storage unit, and determines the cutting conditions relating to the type of material and the tools from the standard cutting condition data and the tool data. A program-generation processing unit (22) specifies a program-generation algorithm corresponding to the designated process in an algorithm table (28) stored in the storage unit and generates machining programs based on the determined cutting conditions in accordance with the program-generation algorithm.