Automated Generation of Tied Node Sets

Hi!

I want to play around with the *CONSTRAINED_TIED_NODES_FAILURE card in defining failure of a metal plate due to a collision with a rigid sphere. I would like to model the plate using solid elements, but I think the best place to start would be in figuring out how to do this with shell elements.

In looking over the keyword manual, I see that there are several tasks that must be completed, and I'm not sure how to do most of them...

i) Create a mesh in which each element has its own set of nodes so that shared node points have multiple coincident (duplicate) nodes).

ii) Define each of the duplicate nodes as a separate node set.

iii) Create a *CONSTRAINED_TIED_NODES_FAILURE card for each "duplicate node" set. 

I am currently creating all of my Dyna key files in LSPP. I could do this in LSPP by hand for a small-scale problem... maybe with <10 elements... but there must be some automated way to do this for large meshes? Do people created their own programs in some other language (I have spent time working with C++) to generated the necessary key text files?

I suppose in general, I am asking: how do people create the massive number of node/element sets that I have seen in many example key files?