BS EN ISO 1101:2012 delayed

ISO 1101:2012 was published by ISO in April 2012.  You can buy a copy today by ordering it directly from ISO.

For member states of the European Union, the next stage for this standard is for it to be adopted as an EU standard by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), when it will become EN ISO 1101:2012.

I would have expected this to be a simple 'rubber stamping' exercise, but I have recently been told that this process started in June, and will take at least 5 months. I have no idea why it would take this long - it seems excessive even in terms of the glacial speed at which most standards organisations operate.

Members of the EU, such as the UK, will not adopt this standard until it has been approved as an EN standard. When it is an EN standard, BSI will then adopt it as a British standard with the title BS EN ISO 1101 (just as Germany will adopt it as a German standard called DIN EN ISO 1101, and so on). This process should be fairly rapid.

Due to the very slow movement at CEN, the earliest that the new BS EN ISO 1101 could appear would be very late in 2012, and it probably won't appear until 2013 (in which case it may well be titled BE EN ISO 1101:2013).

Most unfortuately, this means that the CD version of BS 8888:2011, which includes all the ISO standards that it refers to, and which should now be available from BSI, will include the previous version of ISO 1101 (BS EN ISO 1101:2005).

Constituency boundary changes

I don't normally blog about politics, but this radical approach to boundary reform looks very interesting ... New boundary changes

A bit of history - the first atomic clock

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) recently turned up this old piece of film from the 1950s.

NPL developed the first atomic clock, and this short film explains how it worked.

click here and the film should appear in a new window

NPL is well worth a visit. They hold open days every so often, and have a wealth of really useful information freely available on their web site. They also offer excellent training courses (including our Geometrical Tolerancing course).

New ISO 1101:2012

ISO have just published the new version of ISO 1101, the geometrical tolerancing standard.  The BSI implementation, which will be called BS EN ISO 1101, will appear shortly.

The new standard is mainly concerned with ensuring that all geometrical tolerancing requirements can be applied to 3D CAD models as well as to 2D engineering drawings. Although most of the 2D annotation can already be applied directly to a 3D model without any change of notation or meaning, this is not true of all of it. The standard now includes some additional 3D annotation elements, such as annotation planes and orientation planes, to ensure that all requirements can be fully implemented in a 3D environment.

The new revision also includes some minor changes and clarifications to the wording of the standard, as well as some new functionality.  The use of projected tolerance zones is now incorporated into ISO 1101, instead of a separate standard (ISO 10578), and there is now provision for unilateral and unequal bi-lateral tolerance zones with profile tolerances, using a new UZ modifier.

Explaining Londoners

Picked this up from a tweet from Evan Davis.  A New York Times article explaining Londoners, but much of it applies to Brits anywhere:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/magazine/explaining-londoners.html?_r=3&src=tp

A sense of proportion

If you have not seen this before, it is really worth checking out:

http://www.freewebarcade5.net/media/the-scale-of-the-universe-2.swf

You may have to click to skip an ad, but then you just start the app and move the slider - awesome!

Beijing

Trying to catch up with some blogging for the first time in ages.

I had my first trip to China in September last year, with the ISO TC213 meeting series being held in Beijing.  The city is a fascinating mix of the traditional, the modern, and in the case of the traffic, the downright terrifying.  Parts of the city look as if they have remained unchanged for hundreds of years, whereas the efficient underground railway is full of young Chinese glued to smartphones and media players.

We were treated to the standard tourist trip to the Forbidden City, which is as vast as it is impressive, although many of the interiors are off-limits, which is a shame.

Food was interesting.  In the hotels we were paying western prices for food that was often very poor, whereas a few hundred yards away were local restaurants offering fantastic food for a fraction of the price.

The highlight of the trip was a banquet at the Baijia Dayuan ('Garden of the King') restaurant.  This is set in a beautiful courtyard, reputedly several hundred years old, full of pools and flower beds, and illuminated after dusk with a wonderful array of lanterns.  The staff are all in fabulous traditional dress, and put on a variety show of music and dance to accompany the food.  Highly recommended for anyone who gets the chance to go there.