Question: How does the silkscreen spacing option considerpads are too close?

Example of a trimming rule: the Calculator trims padsizes for you when they fail to meet the specifications in Rules.  Thedefault values we use are all considered best industry practice.

Note: pad clearances are not guaranteed for FP Designer footprintsand there are no warnings.

The clearance of the silkscreen to the body and any pads isset in the Drafting > Silkscreen options. The silkscreen isautomatically trimmed, if required, to meet these values.

There is a hard-coded minimum silkscreen line length of 3silkscreen line widths.  Any silkscreen line segment lessthan this length is removed to avoid the appearance of ‘specks’ on a PCB.

Here is a 0603 chip capacitor that has enough pad-to-padspacing to allow a silkscreen line. This silkscreen outline length exceeds 3line widths.

Here is a 0603 chip capacitor that violates the pad-to-padspacing to allow a silkscreen line. The silkscreen outline wraps around thepads and the courtyard outline is pushed out to include the expanded silkscreenoutline.

You have options to turn off the silkscreen outline if thepattern is too small to create one.

You can also turn off the courtyard excess for including thesilkscreen outline.