STAAD.Pro Ideas Portal
Welcome to the STAAD.Pro Ideas portal. The purpose of this site is to post ideas for enhancements and new features. We value your feedback and our team regularly reviews your suggestions for consideration in future releases.
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Thank you for your comments. However, perhaps the solution you are looking for lies elsewhere. What I mean, this connectivity is best described by introducing beams that provide the different actions. I have attached a simple model where the pipe support point is node 5. This has connections to two columns, members 1 and 2, which only take lateral forces from the left and right. Member 1 only takes lateral forces from the right and member 2 lateral forces from the left. The vertical forces are taken be the beams 7 and 8. This is achieved by introducing connecting members 4, 5 and 6, with 4 and 5 being set and compression only. For example a load from the left only goes into the right column:-
similarly from the right goes into the left column. However vertical loads only go into the beam. 
I that that helps you today. If so, then the idea might be better framed as a way to automate creating this sub structure to achieve a complex connectivity from one node to different parts of the structure.
Hi Carlos,
One way this can be achieved is by adding 12 columns to the table you have screenshotted to represent each Force/Moment degree of freedom where the user can input a node/beam number.
I would add another column to allow the user to pick from "Default" or "Advanced" option for each Support, since most supports can use the existing table inputs to correctly define the Force/Moment interactions. Only a few Supports would have "Advanced" interaction requiring the user to input multiple Node/Beam for each Degree of Freedom.
I am hoping that this idea will extend to capture ISM functionality with Autopipe as well.
Thank you for posting this idea. We are looking at ways that we can provide a better interop for structural and piping models. Essentially I see this idea being that a support id from AutoPIPE can be used as loading items on multiple objects in the structural model. Not just the force type, but also the force direction. This will certainly mean adding a significant amount of additional complexity. In theory a pipe support can be connected to 12 different structural objects (6 degrees of freedom each with 2 load directions). The import wizard would not change, but we would need to provide a method to indicate which structural object is linked to which of these force/direction. That would bmean a complete redesign of the Pipe Supports window. Perhaps you might mock up your idea of how that might look.
