I would appreciate hearing from any board manufacturers concerning the inclusion or exclusion of nonfunctional lands from internal planes or signal layers. IPC-D-275 is vague on this (para 5.3.2.5) by stating "should be included" rather than "shall". I've always included unused pads on internal layers because I was told it aided in the plating and support of the hole. I was recently asked by a vendor to replace our traditional donuts on the plane layers to a complete void (my guess was it would give them an additional .010 radius to work with). This precipitated a conversation about wether we need unused pads on internal signal layers as well. How do you feel about this? Tom Hybiske [log in to unmask]