FooFighters' recognition manual(check the mods forum) is a great help in identifying ships. It rearranges the recognition manual and makes indentification much easier. With it you now have to first just identify the general type of the ship(for example the funnel is in the aft part -> it's an engine aft), and then flip through the few ships in the "Engine aft" part of the recognition manual, insted of hunting them all over the manual as with the stock game.
edit: It's this one
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=125650