8015 ((exclusive)) | Iso

Imagine a French aerospace company in 1985. An engineer drafts a simple shaft for a landing gear actuator. He specifies a diameter of ( 50 \pm 0.1 ) mm. He does not specify straightness, roundness, or parallelism. Why would he? The old default said: If no geometric tolerance is given, the size tolerance controls form . This was the (or Envelope Requirement). The perfect virtual cylinder of the maximum material condition (MMC) would automatically limit how bent or oval the shaft could be.

The German machinist, trained in the old school, assumed the size tolerance controlled the position of the holes loosely. He drilled them. The Swedish inspector, newly trained in ISO 8015, rejected the entire batch. Why? Because under ISO 8015, the size tolerance has nothing to do with position. Without an explicit (using the ⌖ symbol) referenced to a datum system, the holes could be anywhere within the plate's overall length tolerance. The machinist had used the old "chain of defaults." The inspector used the new "independency principle." iso 8015