dealing with stiffened plate and plate girders

huangyhg

dealing with stiffened plate and plate girders
how is everybody engineering stiffened plate and plate girders?  are you still engineering by hand or using a computer program to model them?  our engineering department uses staad.pro, but no one seems to know of an efficient way to model the stiffened plate.  modeling the stiffened plate alone isn't too bad, but incorporating it into a larger model often becomes very cumbersome and time consuming.  any thoughts?
namanges