>>>If you do not wave solder, I do not know of a reason to tent vias...

  Our boards are done in some kind of convection oven rather than wave
  soldered, and we tent our vias because the distance from pad to via is
  sometimes too small to get a reliable mask dam: e.g. a via is 8 mils from
  the pad it connects to and the board house leaves a 3 mil gap around vias
  and pads, and the LPI SM we use won't stick if it's only 2mils thick. So
  to prevent solder from getting sucked across the trace and into the vias
  we tent them.

  Andy B


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