Hi All, I'm trying to better understand the process of drilling holes in a PCB and the files that are used by the board fabricators to do this. I am a PCB designer and presently send gerber files (fabrication gerber included) and a drill file (excellon format) to my board house for boards to be made. The fabrication drawing contains a drill table with symbols that represent each hole size and whether or not it is a plated or non-plated hole. I never allowed a plated and non-plated hole to be the same size in any of my designs because my CAD tools couldn't recognize that a plated and non-plated hole could be the same size and thus couldn't generate 2 different symbols for each. Well now my CAD vendor has provided me with the ability of tagging my padstacks as either a plated or non-plated hole so that I can generate a different drill symbol for my fab drawings. And I can also generate different drill files that can either include all hole styles, only plated holes or only non-plated holes which I thought would help my board fabricator out by not having to separate out the plated from the non-plated hole coordinates in the drill file. But when I called him to see if he could make better use of 2 drill files (plated and non-plated), he said he only wants the 1 file that contains both the plated and non-plated hole locations. Wouldn't it be better to have the 2 files? What don't I know? I would greatly appreciate all feedback from any designers or board fabricators. Regards, Bob Walker [log in to unmask] ################################################################ TechNet E-Mail Forum provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ################################################################ To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TechNet <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TechNet ################################################################ Please visit IPC's web site (http://www.ipc.org) "On-Line Services" section for additional information. For technical support contact Hugo Scaramuzza at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.312 ################################################################