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.

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Carl Dekker
President Chair of the Direct Digital
Manufacturing Advisory Team
Met-L-Flo

Jason Fox, Ph.D.
Mechanical Engineer
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Gaithersburg, MD

Maxwell Praniewicz, Ph.D.
Mechanical Engineer
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Gaithersburg, MD

Jaime Berez
Ph.D. Candidate & Instructor
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA