CAE plated structure, easy way to connect shells. 1

[acrmnsm]

A plated structure, like a ship hull, I am trying to plan my model to make things easier later on and could do with some tips.
If I make lots of parts to represent each plate - which I think? is necessary as the sections change even if the dims are the same for various hull plates stringers etc. What is the easiest way to connect the shells together i.e. butted and T connections. It seems like a lot of work to manually tie each one together when there are 200 ish plates. Is there a better way?

 

[FEA way]

Abaqus/CAE has built-in Find Contact Pairs tool that can be used to automatically apply contact pairs or tie constraints. You can adjust its settings to search for surface pairs more efficiently. Another way would be to merge the instances (Instance —> Merge/Cut).

 

[acrmnsm]

I forgot about that, of course, I can use that to generate ties.