Re: gEDA-user: Silkscreen over pads

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> 
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 11:28:28AM -0500, Stuart Brorson wrote:
> [...]
> > Nonetheless, I wouldn't recommend sending them boards to fab in the
> > future.  Their software doesn't seem to work well with the Gerber
> > exported by PCB.  I wonder if their mfg software has problems with
> > other CAD tools also? The best vendor I have used for PCB designs is
> > Advanced Circuits (www.4pcb.com); I think other people on this list
> > will second this recommendation.   
> 
> I've seen that recommendation before as well, but the problem is that
> Advanced Circuits is enormously more expensive than the cheap guys, at
> least in the quantities I deal in.  When pcbfabexpress.com gives you 5
> 4-layer boards for $33 each (or 5 2-layer boards for $19 ea.), it's
> hard to justify paying much more.  I've only had good experiences with
> them.  I switched to PCBExpress this time because it was for a
> quantity of 20 boards, and they're cheaper at that quantity, and also
> way way cheaper than Advanced Circuits.  Perhaps I shall have to
> consider other options for larger quantity orders.  (I'm going to be
> doing 80-100 in the next order probably -- perhaps Advanced Circuits
> will be competitive at that quantity.)

5 4-layer boards at $33 each is not cheaper than Advanced Circuits if
your boards are dead on arrival.  ;-)  

> I will give them the details on my problem and see what they say.
> It's hard to imagine what sort of software they could be using that
> would ignore the deletions, and how that same software would not have
> problems with other CAD packages.

If you're going to talk to them, I wonder if you could clarify with
them why there are two independent instances of customer boards with
deletions which didn't get deleted at their place?  It sounds like
they might want to do some internal process bug fixing; having
customers inquire about a repeated mistake might make them finally fix
it, or at least investigate what is going on. . . .

Stuart