Hello, My design engineers currently use a large amount of soldermask defined pads in ground planes for RF boards. Based on discussions with my fabricator and our assembly manufacturing folks, we'd like to get rid of designs like this and use spoked thermal ties to ground instead. My RF engineers, however, have concerns about doing this and losing material in their connection. Does anyone have guidelines for boards like this? I guess I'd be interested in hearing both sides: from the fabricator or assembler, how much material would we need to remove from a connection to a pad to affect the manufacturability; from the designer, how much material are you willing to have removed without sacrificing any functionality. Thanks for the help, Matt Matthew Sanders PWB Procurement Engineer, Trimble Navigation Limited [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 ################################################################