Hi Brandon, We tie all our vias directly to the plane without thermals, and have had no problem with heat dissipation causing cold solder joints. The widest trace we will pull off a land is 25 mils wide, and this only in the case of 50 mil pitch parts. Those parts with a finer pitch, we generally will connect using a 12 or 10 mil trace. Of course this is usually only in the case of power and ground signals, although we have used thicker traces on occasion to effect the impedance of certain critical signals. All our vias are kept a minimum of 20 mils (edge to edge) from the surface mount land. Best regards, Ken Barrett Cisco Systems San Jose CA [log in to unmask] 408.526.5625 **************************************************************************** * The mail list is provided as a service by IPC using SmartList v3.05 * **************************************************************************** * To unsubscribe from this list at any time, send a message to: * * [log in to unmask] with <subject: unsubscribe> and no text. * ****************************************************************************