I was looking over the notes on the static load case editor and noticed the part about being able to change the multiplier on friction and the behaviour of spring hangers.

Being able to take the spring as a rigid support certainly looks to be useful, particularly for checking pump systems. However, I see the option to ignore the spring support altogether. I imagine sombody requested this feature, but I'm having trouble thinking up a case where I would want to ignore the spring loads.

Does anyone have an example?

The [Ignore] option doesn't remove the hanger loads, rather it causes the program to ignore the stiffness [K] of the hangers.

Why was this done? Because a lot of pipe stress programs (especially older ones or those that had main frame origins) default this way. Ignoring the stiffness often allows the system to be "balanced" in more than one load case (which is nuts), but it makes everybody happy.

We put this option in the software for two reasons: 1) for benchmarking purposes against these older programs, and 2) to win one particular client over from a competitor.

Note, this is not a recent option. The ability to ignore hanger stiffness has been in the Configuration Module since probably Version 3.16. We recently moved it into the Static Load Case Editor because we were adding the other two options, and so that it could be controlled on a case by case basis rather than on a job by job basis.

Unless you're trying to match results from an older program that operated this way, I recommend that you never use this particular [Ignore] setting.