Cylindrical spacetimes with rotation are studied using the Newmann-Penrose
formulas. By studying null geodesic deviations the physical meaning of each
component of the Riemann tensor is given. These spacetimes are further extended
to include rotating dynamic shells, and the general expression of the surface
energy-momentum tensor of the shells is given in terms of the discontinuation
of the first derivatives of the metric coefficients. As an application of the
developed formulas, a stationary shell that generates the Lewis solutions,
which represent the most general vacuum cylindrical solutions of the Einstein
field equations with rotation, is studied by assuming that the spacetime inside
the shell is flat. It is shown that the shell can satisfy all the energy
conditions by properly choosing the parameters appearing in the model, provided
that $ 0 \le \sigma \le 1$, where $\sigma$ is related to the mass per unit
length of the shell.Comment: Typed in Revtex, including three figures. To appear in General
Relativity and Gravit