[SystemSafety] Which software for very basic FTA?

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 9/24/13 11:37 AM, David MENTRE wrote:
> I am planning to do some FTA (and possibly FMEA). Such FTA are going
> to be very very basic (relatively small tree, no probabilities, ...

We call those "qualitative FTs"

> I could use MS Visio or similar drawing software. I am already using
> MS Excel. However I would like to have (i) a graphical representation
> of the tree, (ii) numbering of events (for traceability), (iii)
> printing capabilities (print the tree on several A4 pages in readable
> form).

If you don't care about Manhattan layout (vertical/horizontal edges only) but are willing to accept 
slanted edges, then the dot engine (part of the GraphViz package) is good. We have been using 
various versions of it in the SERAS tool and its predecessors for a decade and a half.

One advantage of dot over Visio is that you specify the connections (the language is simple) and the 
layout is automatic. So when nodes get moved, the edges follow them; you don't have to move each 
element separately.

SERAS does item (ii). It also does (iii), but only via other open source tools.

There are Linux tools for doing (iii), but they only "tile" a complete graphic; they don't split the 
tree up in any cognitively intelligent manner.

We have used predecessors of SERAS to produce FTs. But the current version of SERAS doesn't have the 
"AND"/"OR"-gate graphics that FTs use. And I haven't fired up our old SW in many years.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de