Dear sirs,
I'm studying a piping system of an offshore plants.

In the first part of its life (shipping):
- some lines will be not connected to the equipments (a connecting spool will be added before the start up)
- load cases will be different (no pressure, no temperature, high accelerations because of the waves of the ship during transportation)

In the second part of its life (operating)
- the system will be completed with the hook up lines
- some supports necessary to stand the shipping acceleration that will be not appropriate to work with the hot and pressurized lines will be removed
- load cases will be different

What I did is to create two different models, one for the shipping, one for the operating.
The problem is that there if is a modification, I must change two files

Some people uses the "Include Piping Input file" feature.
Some other people use one model with the two configurations, so with a single run the two systems are analyzed.


Is it possible to build a model and switch off some supports or some part of the models in some load cases?
If not, do you have any suggestion about the handling this kind of situation?
Handling two different files create a risk to forget to have the two system with the same updates...

Thank you very much.

No, you can't turn restraints on/off based on the load case. Your "two model" approach is the correct methodology.