One of the most time consuming things I’ve found is how to create an interlocking plating pattern on meshes such as spaceship hulls.  The most effective method is to manually extrude edge loops over and over, which can be very time consuming. The more detailed you want the mesh to be, the longer it will take.

With a background in software engineering I have created a plugin that greatly speeds up the process, allowing you to quickly create a selection in a plating pattern and and extrude the edges accordingly.

Features:

• Quickly generate a plating pattern from a random seed. The pattern is an interlocking effect designed to be more advanced than the standard random face selection in Blender.
• The pattern can be generated on a whole quad based mesh or on a sub selection of quad faces.
• Control the amount of grooves cut between the plates.
• Control the depth of the grooves.
• Control the thickness of the grooves.
• Option to split the edges on a smooth mesh to ensure the edges are cleanly defined.
• Option to completely remove the grooves and leave the plates intact.
• No hidden geometry created, actions are performed directly on the mesh.

Not tested