Issues in conditional tolerances for CAD systems

Incorporation of tolerance information in CAD systems is a major challenge facing the mechanical CAD/CAM community. True integration of CAD and CAM can be achieved only after we know how to specify functionally acceptable class of mechanical parts in the CAD systems so that they can be fabricated and inspected by the CAM systems. This paper explores the issues involved in specifying one special case of tolerances called conditional tolerances for CAD systems.