gEDA-user: Fiducial

[Dan McMahill]

Jeff VR wrote:
> 
>  >Is you soldermask clear enough?
> I'm not sure. I haven't ordered my boards yet. My assembler requires the 
> fiducial to not have the soldermask so the vision equipment is sure to 
> get an accurate reading.

you should not have paste or soldermask over the fiducial.

>  >Does this need to be a feature?
> I'm not an expert in PCB layout tools but given the importance of a good 
> fiducial it seems worthy of some development time.
> 

I think it is important but I'm not sure when I'll have time.  I wonder 
if maybe just a "nopaste" flag for pins/pads is enough.  The soldermask 
opening is already supported.  If a 'nopaste' flag is allowed I wonder 
if running drc should give you a count of how many pads have 'nopaste'. 
  You'd hate to blow a stencil because you accidentally turned off the 
solderpaste on 17 pads on a 240 pin fpga...


-Dan