Beam\Shell connections in ABAQUS 6.3 CAE

[zneip]

I'm going to do a non-linear buckling analysis of an offshore crane with ABAQUS 6.3.1 CAE. There are L-beams conected with the sideplates going from one bulkhead to the next.
Beam properties can only be assigned to wires, and I can not create a wire on a shell. Creating a wire from bulkhead to bulkhead will loose contact with sideplates.

How can I maintain contact with both the sideplates(shell), and bulkheads in CAE?

I think it is possible to do this bye hand using MPC (MultiPointConstraints) between shellnodes and beamnodes, but there will be a lot of beams in my model so this seems a bit timeconsuming, and I don't have any experience with ABAQUS standard.

Being a novice, I will appriciate any tip.

 

[corus]

In the Assembly module I think you can join the beams to the shells providing there is some geometry there, ie. a point from a division of a line or the end of a line. Do a *preprint and a datacheck though to make sure that the global node numbering at the coincident points give the same nodes as I'm not absoultely sure on that one. That way they will be connected.
As for making a beam on a shell I think in the mesh module you can assign an element type to a line so that the part will have shell elements and beam elements along the edge, if that's what you want. Again, I'm not sure of that either.
Otherwise you can make node sets and tie the nodes together in CAE one by one as you say, but it is laborious.