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In order to predict the ductile damage occurrence in metal forming, an “advanced” finite anisotropic elastoplastic constitutive equations accounting for the “strong” coupling with ductile damage have been developed and implemented in general 3D purpose F.E. software ABAQUS/Explicit®. The aim of this paper is to compare the 3D formulation using solid elements to the plane stress formulation within shell elements, regarding their ability to predict failure in sheet metal forming. Comparisons are made in term of the damage and thickness distributions as well as the global force – displacement curves. It has been shown that the plane stress assumption gives quite different results compared to the realistic 3D case when the damage effect (coupling) is taken into account. Also, the plane stress assumption is no more valid when plastic flow together with damage is highly localized.