Your question is more complex than you realize perhaps. It is commonly asked, and always reminds me of one of my bosses who in an effort to speed up the work said "only check the portions of the drawing which are wrong!" Anyhow, as you can imagine after I heard that statement I realized that some people do not understand the complexity of a given task.

The analysis of lines or should we say systems and sub-systems, is really a sorting out process as you have implied by the word culling. That is in order to evaluate a systems flexibility you need the system geometry and restraint conditions. There is no way to eliminate these needs entirely. You can ignore ambient lines if you like but, I have had to increase flexibility in even these types lines to account for differential structure movements.

If you are on a limited budget concentrate on the obvious… hot process and steam lines, and lines above 200F attached to rotating equipment. However, I strongly suggest that you eyeball more than less… while recently eyeballing another consultants work I found two anchors 60 feet apart (on the same header) on a stainless steel line that operated around 200F or so, I don't need a computer to tell me that this is a bad idea! Good Luck!


------------------
Best Regards,

John C. Luf