Part 1 can be found here.

This two-part seminar series, organized by the SME Direct Digital Manufacturing Advisory Team, will cover the fundamentals of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) with a focus on application to digital manufacturing. GD&T, synonymously known as geometric product specification (GPS), offers a set of tools for design engineers to communicate geometric specifications to manufacturers and inspectors via engineering drawings. While GD&T is well-known in industry, it is not commonly taught in engineering classrooms and often suffers from misconceptions even among practicing engineers.

In the age of digital manufacturing, GD&T remains as the standard language of the manufacturing industry to communicate the intricacies of novel component geometries. Further, even though digital design and manufacturing tools create a façade of limitless precision, all manufacturing processes are imperfect, resulting in dimensional errors in the manufactured component. GD&T acknowledges this paradigm, allowing the designer to indicate the level and form of acceptable error and the manufacturer to implement processes that meet specification.

Part 1 of this seminar series will establish key concepts of imprecision in manufacturing and cover the standard ‘language’ of GD&T, as defined by ASME Y14.5-2018. In Part 2, a check list of GD&T tasks for the designer will be presented and put into practice via an example. Multiple case studies will be presented, highlighting how GD&T plays a role in digital manufacturing, additive manufacturing, and common tolerancing tasks.