We study an approach to constructing multiple soliton solutions of the (3+1)-dimensional nonlinear evolution
equation. We take the (3+1)-dimensional Jimbo-Miwa (JM) equation as an example. Using the extended homogeneous
balance method, one can find a Backlund transformation to decompose the (3+1)-dimensional JM equation into a
linear partial differential equation and two bilinear partial differential equations. Starting from these linear and bilinear partial differential equations, some multiple soliton solutions for the (3+1)-dimensional JM equation are obtained by introducing a class of formal solutions.