The authors present a general methodology based on R.S. Desai's (1988) concept of contact formations and combine it with a model of contact mechanics to solve the dexterous manipulation planning problem. The model of contact mechanics supports the analysis of contact situations with multiple sliding contacts, allowing it to solve problems not solvable if only rolling contacts are allowed. Based on the proposed methodology, a planner would effectively solve two-point boundary value problems by using contact formation transitions to discretize the configuration space of, for example, a hand/object system. Within each discrete cell, or contact formation a model of contact mechanics is used to generate trajectories joining the cells and building a contact formation tree. If a solution exists, the tree grows until it contains a path from the initial grasp to the goal grasp. Then the individual input trajectories (assigned to the arcs of the tree) are combined to generate the complete manipulation trajectories.>