NIMS Offers Innovative Teaching Technique to Make GD&T a ‘Native Tongue’

(NIMS: Fairfax, VA) -- The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) has developed a new methodology to learn, retain, and transfer knowledge for Geometric Tolerancing & Dimensioning (GD&T) across an organization. NIMS offers the training in a day and a half workshop.

Conventionally, most people are taught print reading with drawings, annotated with limit dimensioning and all its flaws. Lessons in limit dimensioning are further applied in engineering or manufacturing activities. Students or employees are then exposed to GD&T—the international standard, with symbols to describe parts in a language that is clearly understood by any manufacturer. This traditional approach usually results in limit dimensioning being the first language, or “native tongue,” and GD&T being the second. Going back and forth between the two is a struggle for many, and they rely on craftmanship to produce parts. This approach may eventually lead to producing parts within the specifications but, according to NIMS, that approach is inconsistent and wastes time.

“GDT is the best way for manufacturers to ensure parts are absolutely within specifications,” says NIMS Executive Director Montez King. “It gives designers, engineers, and machinists a common language to communicate not only for manufacturing, but how those parts fit into its final assembly.”

However, like any language, it only works if everyone agrees to speak it and fully understands it. And that’s where NIMS comes in.

According to King, the optimal way to learn GDT is to teach employees and students how GD&T works rather than its applications. Teaching GD&T applications restricts understanding and only relays a process or procedure. But when GD&T is understood, as though it’s the person’s native tongue, every application makes sense. In fact, when GD&T is well understood, it's retained, and applications can be improved continuously.

NIMS helps organizations transfer GD&T knowledge and skills much the same way children learn their native language. Further, NIMS teaches an organization how to embed GD&T across all lines of communication within the enterprise. By the end of NIMS GD&T training, the staff will be able to understand and use GD&T in all stages of design and production.

To make GD&T the first language in your organization, contact NIMS at (703) 352–4971, www.nims-skills.org.

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