A new algorithm for 3D mesh simplification based on minimum surface area error was presented in this paper. The algorithm simplifies 3D models by minimizing an error objective function. Firstly, the algorithm used the edge traversal algorithm for calculating the minimum area of each edge. Then the vertex coordinates of those new points were determined by finding the minimum surface area error. The results of our experiment show that our algorithm can not only reflect the local surface geometry changes, but also keep the model in a relatively high fidelity. Experimental results for the effectiveness of the algorithm were also presented.