In order to realize the living inheritance of the canal cultural heritage, and to extract and design the cultural genes of the canal, the work aims to propose a method for the extraction and application of cultural genes based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Shape Grammar and take the modeling design of the transportation vehicle as an example to carry out the design practice. The hierarchical structure model and judgment matrix were established by the analytic hierarchy process, the canal cultural genes were screened and sorted, and the canal cultural genes with higher weight values were obtained. Then, the Shape Grammar was used to deduce the shape of the extracted cultural genes, and the characteristic shapes were obtained. Finally, the obtained characteristic shape was converted into a 3D basic shape, and the modeling design scheme of the transportation vehicle was obtained by the design language.The example of the modeling design of transportation vehicle shows that the application of AHP and Shape Grammar can effectively realize the extraction and design application of cultural genes, so as to guide the benign mutation of cultural genes and provide new paths and references for the living inheritance of cultural heritage.