This paper presents families of equivalent, intermediate and layerwise plate models. It is shown that the layerwise model approach, using high value of in-plane and transverse approximation orders is very accurate pointwise with respect to all the stress components and displacement components. However, using this model can be computationally expensive, especially when the number of layers is large. In this paper, a novel region-by-region modeling strategy is developed. By this strategy any of the above model can be put in any region of the domain. It is shown that by judiciously using layerwise models only in regions where solution is predominantly three-dimensional in nature, and lower order models elsewhere, the same accuracy (as the layerwise model) can be achieved at significantly lower computational cost. This strategy can be effectively used for analyzing laminated plates with complicated structural details (corners, cut-outs), material transitions and damaged regions in the form of delamination and ply damage. Copyright © 2006 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.