3DDave,
You asserted "for the lower segment only: since datum axis B is nominally perpendicular to datum plane A, then it is redundant and controls nothing". Now you're saying that no one has argued that B is not needed in the composite FCF. Most of us would take the phrase "it is redundant and controls nothing" to mean that you think that it is not needed. If you meant something else by that, we're not going to get it. If you're still thinking that B would be referenced only for decoration, to satisfy Y14.5's arbitrary rule, then you disagree with pmarc and I. We're saying that B is needed in the lower segment because referencing it affects the orientation of the DRF. If you disagree, that's fine.
I'll try to at least briefly answer your other questions from the last post:
I know that Y14.5 makes some statements about the lower segment being a refinement of the upper segment, but I don't think that this kind of description should be given very much weight. To me, what really matters are the rules governing the tolerance zones and datum feature simulators. So if you want to argue that the lower segment is not really a refinement of the upper segment if the DRF's are different, then I suppose that's probably right.
If the datum feature references in the upper and lower segments are exactly the same, then the simulators would be exactly the same. In this case, I would say that the actual part must be adjusted in the same way for the inspection of each segment. If the datum feature references in the lower segment are different than in the upper segment, then the simulators for the lower segment would be a subset of the simulators for the upper segment. In that case, I would say that the actual part can be adjusted differently for each segment. Regarding how much tolerance is allowed for those shifts in orientation or how that affects tolerance stacks, there's no simple answer to that.
I'm not really sure what the reasons were for Y14.5's requirement for the order to be the same. I believe it was mainly the idea that the lower segment is a refinement of the upper segment. I believed they used to use the term "liberation within given limits" or something like that. I wasn't around when composite FCF's were first introduced, but I have heard from friends that there was a lot of debate over how the lower segment should work. I would agree that if the datum features in the lower segment are different than in the upper segment, it's not really liberation within the same limits. They could have just stated that the datum features in the lower segment must be exactly the same as in the upper segment, and not allowed the subset cases. Then the orientation of the DRF would be the same for both. But they didn't do that.
Evan Janeshewski
Axymetrix Quality Engineering Inc.