Ansys medini analyze is an established functional-safety suite with roots in automotive ISO 26262 work, and it is used on aerospace programs too. Teams that come to us from it are usually not unhappy with fault trees as such. They are carrying a process that lives in several places, a quantification they cannot fully explain to a DER, and a licensing model that makes it hard to give reviewers access. Safety Lab Aero was built by an aerospace safety engineer around the ARP 4761A / ARP 4754B process itself, and that shows up in five places.
1. The aerospace process is the product, not a profile
AFHA, PASA, SFHA, PSSA, SSA and ASA live in one workspace with every artifact connected to every other one. The project declares its certification basis (AC 25.1309, AC 23.1309 by class, or SC-VTOL for eVTOL) and every failure condition carries the probability target and development assurance level that basis assigns. DAL allocation follows ARP 4754B, including the AND-gate options and sibling rebalancing. See the ARP 4761A process page and DAL allocation.
2. Quantification you can defend
The top-event probability is computed directly, not approximated by the minimal-cut-set upper bound, which matters as soon as a basic event repeats across cut sets or a common-cause group is present. Dynamic gates (PAND, SPARE, FDEP) are simulated. Every evaluation runs twice, once as clause arithmetic and once as compiled model logic, and the two are cross-checked; a disagreement is a named finding, not a silent number. Importance measures and Monte Carlo uncertainty are standard. Details on the fault tree analysis page.
3. Traceability that is a structure, not a report
An FHA severity change flags the fault tree target, the DAL allocation and every derived requirement it touches. Approvals are re-authenticated signatures bound to the exact analysis state they signed; if the analysis changes afterwards, the record says so. Saves, sealed revisions and sign-offs land in an append-only, hash-chained ledger, and configuration baselines snapshot the whole project at PDR, CDR and submission.
4. AI that drafts and never does the math
AI-assisted authoring drafts certification prose over your project data and is forbidden from inventing failure conditions, severities, DALs, reliability values or regulatory citations. Every AI section passes through a human Accept, Edit or Discard gate before a document can be finalized. The deterministic results are never touched by a model. How the guardrails work is on the AI guardrails page.
5. Prices you can read without a sales call
Pro is $1,500 per seat per month, Pro+ is $2,500, and education is free. Organizations on an active type-certification program take an Enterprise license, which adds independent review and sign-off chains, requirements-tool integration, single sign-on and training. The numbers are on the pricing section, and an Enterprise quote is a conversation about seats and support, not a discovery call.
What to test before you switch
- One real failure condition end to end: FHA classification with its basis, fault tree with a repeated event and a common-cause group, quantification, DAL allocation, derived requirements.
- Change the severity of that condition and count what the tool flags downstream.
- Import a ReqIF export from your requirements tool and check that identifiers, attributes and trace links survived.
- Have a reviewer open the analysis and sign a section, then change the analysis and check that the signature is shown as no longer matching.
- Ask for the quantification of the same tree from both tools on identical inputs, and for an explanation of any difference.
Moving across
FHA rows, requirements and traces import over ReqIF and from spreadsheets. Fault trees and FMEAs are rebuilt against the imported failure conditions; during an evaluation we do that with you on a representative subset, so the two quantifications can be compared on the same inputs before anything is committed. Training is staged: the safety lane first, then the reliability and human-factors lanes once the team is running.
Frequently asked questions
Is Safety Lab Aero a replacement for medini analyze?
For aircraft and system safety assessment under ARP 4761A and ARP 4754B, yes: functional hazard assessment, fault tree analysis, FMEA, common-cause analysis, DAL allocation, safety requirements and verification traceability are all in the product. It is not a general-purpose functional-safety suite for automotive ISO 26262 work; it is built for the aerospace process and the certification bases that go with it.
Can I bring existing fault trees and FHAs across?
FHA rows, requirements and trace links import over ReqIF from Jama Connect, Polarion and IBM DOORS, and from spreadsheets. Fault trees and FMEAs are rebuilt in Safety Lab Aero against the imported failure conditions; during an evaluation we do this with you on a representative subset so the quantification can be compared side by side on the same inputs.
How does the pricing compare?
Safety Lab Aero publishes its prices: Pro is $1,500 per seat per month, Pro+ is $2,500, and education is free. Organizations on an active type-certification program take an Enterprise license, which adds review and sign-off chains, requirements-tool integration, training and contract terms. We do not publish other vendors' prices; ask them for a quote on the same seat count and compare the total.
What should I test in an evaluation?
Take one real failure condition end to end: classify it in the FHA with its certification basis, build its fault tree with a repeated event and one common-cause group, quantify it, allocate DAL, derive the safety requirements, then change the severity and watch what the tool flags. That single loop shows the process fit, the math, and whether traceability is real or a report generated after the fact.
Run the comparison on your own analysis
Bring one failure condition and one fault tree from your current tool. We will set it up with you and you can compare the numbers.
Ansys and medini analyze are trademarks of ANSYS, Inc. Safety Lab Aero, Inc. is not affiliated with or endorsed by ANSYS, Inc. Statements about other products describe them in general terms as publicly documented; check current capabilities with the vendor.