Hi,

I am considering the best way to model a large section of a vessel. Since it's a fairly large model I plan to use surface elements for all plating, major beams and brackets. And than for modelling stiffeners I would like to use beams, hopefully that would reduce computing time. 

This approach however has issues:

1. If I use beams attached to plates, will that play nicely with the rest of the model (see image 01)

     - my preliminary assumption is that if I don't connect longitudinal stiffeners to transversal beam it shouldn't significantly impact results.

2. If using beams, is there any way to model connection of horizontal to vertical stiffeners and also bracket connections (see image 02)

     - these are easily modelled by plates, but if I model stiffeners as beams there will be a large gap between them, or between stiffener and bracket.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.