Cylindrical shells are commonly employed as rotating components in large rotating machinery for their high stiffness and low weight properties. In this paper, finite element (FE) models for a rotor with cylindrical shells are developed using elements of different dimensions. The accuracy and computational efficiency of those models are compared, upon which suggestions on modeling this type of rotors are presented. The analysis results show that proper chosen of the element dimensions helps developing rotor models of both desirable accuracy and efficiency. The techniques presented in this paper benefits modeling rotors with cylindrical shells in practical applications.