A model is presented for predicting the preferential crystallographic orientation of chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) films. This model incorporates the evolutionary selection model that the orientation occurs along the fastest growing plane. The model assumes that surface growth is a consecutive process of collision, adsorption, and reaction of a film growth species and considers that the atomic unit of a crystal is constructed from a single growth species. The model predicts that with increasing temperature many films change from amorphous, to an orientation along the plane packed most densely with the atomic unit, to an orientation along the plane of the fastest adsorption, and finally to a random orientation. The applicability of the model was successfully tested for CVD systems to form Cu, Al, Si, Cu2O, and PbTiO3.