Re: gEDA-user: Silkscreen over pads

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Nevermind -- I just checked the gerbers I sent to the fab in gerbv,
> and the overlapping silk has clearly been deleted.  And yet, there
> it is right there in green and white on the boards that came back.
> How could this happen?  Is it that pcb writes the complete silk
> layer to the gerber along with commands to delete the overlapping
> portion?

Yes, that's what we do.  We do all the polygon clearances that way,
too.  If they don't respect the negative polarities in the gerbers,
they don't support gerber.

> If this is so, then it would seem that pcbexpress.com ignores these
> "delete" commands.  Am I justified in telling them to re-do the
> boards at their expense?  They might complain, since I didn't use
> the "free" gerber viewer they recommend to check my files, ViewMate
> from www.pentalogix.com.  Of course, that gerber viewer runs only on
> Windows on is only free as in free beer.

Well, you could ask someone to view them for you, it might help.  Or
try www.freedfm.com to see if it passes that, with and without the
deletions (to make sure it's checking them).