Fred Tolmie

With a career origin of NASA draftsman at Kennedy Space Center (1977), and having enjoyed designing everything
from fish finders to rocket launchers, from dish antennas to head up displays, I have developed the strongest desire
to return to spacecraft and launch system design activities, much inspired by recent years’ space exploration
missions and commercial spacecraft developments.
My employment as a senior draftsman and product designer with such luminaries as Shakespeare Marine
Electronics, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics and the Harris Corporation led to joining Rockwell Collins (then,
Rockwell International) as a senior designer, and for extraordinary performance promoted to senior engineer.
After appointment as Rockwell’s Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GDT) leader, membership in the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and during my work for the ASME Y14.41 committee, my
experience-based capabilities expanded to include fabrication practices, producibility studies and first article
inspection methods. This spanning of the domains provisioned me to be an exceptionally practical-minded and
highly appreciated GDT educator while I created and contributed to company, national and international standards
for design engineering practices.
Teaching fabrication and quality assurance persons how best to comprehend and act upon the product definition of
the design activity has taught me much about their domains’ activities in return. Today my work as a professional
draftsman, aerospace designer and design engineer is well informed by these mutual studies. The results are design
model constructs and digital engineering drawings that improve everyone’s capability for confident right action
upon such complex sets of information.
Professional Accreditations and Accomplishments:
2004 Promotion from senior designer to senior mechanical engineer.
2003 Lean Electronics Champion certification, Rockwell Collins Aerospace Electronics Inc.
1999-2005 Community college adjunct faculty member teaching Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GDT).
1997-2006 Senior GDT Professional certification from the ASME (Y14.5.2 certification number SGDTP-0139).
1997-2005 Member of ASME Y14.41 committee creating the international standard Product Definition Data Practices.
1996-2003 Membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
1995-2000 GDT domain expert for the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) Standard Exchange of
Product Data, STEP 10303: Application Protocol 210, Electronic Assembly, Interconnect and Packaging Design.
1993 Recipient of the Rockwell International Pioneer Partnership Award.
Technical Skill Set:
25+ years of fast and accurate 3D design model construction and engineering drawing creation using AutoDesk
AutoCad, Dassault Systems SolidWorks and Siemens PLM NX Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems.
20+ years an expert in both using and teaching GDT, including the current ASME Y14.5-2009 standard.
20+ years abiding knowledge about fabrication tools and processes for aluminum casting and plastic injection
molding, complex sheet metal punching and forming, machined and turned workpieces. This includes practice with
open setup and coordinate measuring machine (CMM) methods of inspection and validation for finished articles.
20+ years an informative and engaging public speaker teaching design fundamentals and GDT to thousands of
college students, designers, mechanical engineers, machinists, part programmers and article inspectors.
15+ years performing assembly tolerance analyses, and conducting producibility studies of fabrication articles.
15+ years a prolific writer and illustrator of numerous technical papers, GDT training booklets, design guidelines
and engineering standards.