J-P,
I have a strong opinion on this one, and I'm sticking to my guns. I maintain that it's not OK to say that the effective tolerance zone gets larger, even for the special case.
I don't agree that the word "tolerance" is how close to perfect we must be. In dimensioning and tolerancing, the "tolerance" represents the difference between the allowable extremes. So for a spec of 10 +/- 1, the allowable deviation from perfection is 1 but the tolerance is 2.
I agree that in the special case the total allowable offset between the axes of the actual diameters could be no larger than half the total of stated tolerance + bonus + shift. But the next step of concluding that the tolerance has been increased is not correct, because a Position tolerance is not defined in terms of allowable offset between the considered feature's axis and the datum feature's axis. It is defined as the size of a zone, centered at true position, that the considered feature's axis must lie within. This zone allows orientation error as well as axis offset, which is what the textbook example overlooks. So shifting the zone around does not make the tolerance zone increase in size, even in the special case example. If we treat the zone as if it did increase in size due to the shift, then we would pass a feature whose axis was excessively tilted and would not fit.
A tolerance zone that shifts around is carving out a larger something (you called it an effective tolerance zone), but we must be careful to not confuse that effective tolerance zone with the tolerance zone itself. We should call it something else, to avoid this confusion - perhaps the term "spatial domain" might do. The considered feature component (in this case the axis) can span the entire tolerance zone, but it cannot span the entire spatial domain.
The geometry is different, but the underlying issue is the same as one that we disagreed over in Frank's thread about the sphere positioned to a single datum plane. I maintained that the tolerance zone is not the volume between two parallel planes, it's a spherical zone that can freely translate. Using my new term, the volume between the parallel planes would be the "spatial domain" of the sphere's center point.
Evan Janeshewski
Axymetrix Quality Engineering Inc.