I’m ready to send my pcb to BatchPCB but when running final DRC I get hundreds of stop mask errors. These correspond to places where the silkscreen mask overlaps an area that is not covered by the solder mask. The components I used from the SparkFun library do not exhibit this problem. It seems to only be a problem with the standard components from the eagle library. For example, the standard DIP contains an outline of the package which overlaps the pads (see attached image).
It seems odd that standard components would exhibit this problem. Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to fix this problem, or does BatchPCB clip the silkscreen to only areas covered by solder mask? Is there a way I can do the clipping myself in Eagle?
Thanks,
Josh
If you have the stop mask shown in Eagle, it will throw DRC errors. If you hide those layers, they will be ignored by the DRC. It has no effect on the finished boards, as silkscreen won’t stick to non-masked areas.
Whoever created those parts should have avoided putting the outlines over pads. It wouldn’t matter, though, with the suppliers I use.
I just did a test and what I said earlier is true. When you run the DRC, make sure that only the layers that really matter (Top/Bottom Copper, Pads, Vias, Silkscreen) are shown. Do not show Top/Bottom Solder Mask.
But really, all this is just to make the DRC look nice. You can safely ignore the type of error in question 
Thank you both for the replies. I did notice that the errors only appeared when the tstop and bstop layers where shown. So since you both are saying that BatchPCB does not care if silkscreen is in places where there will be no solder mask, I will run the spark fun CAM job and be done.
tjncooke:
But really, all this is just to make the DRC look nice. You can safely ignore the type of error in question
I’ve run into this on my boards as well with Eagle… is there a DRC setting anywhere that can turn off this particular error message? I searched the DRC settings the first time I encountered the problem but did not find anything.
My main job is a programmer, and I’ve been dealing with compiler ‘warnings’ for the last 20 years. The first intuition of most programmers is just to ignore the warnings that you know aren’t a problem. Sooner or later compiler output produces so many warnings that when an important warning occurs it gets lost in the noise, and an easily avoidable real bug is missed. It feels like the same situation would likely arise from selectively ignoring DRC errors.
Eagle is a great program and has saved me many hours work, but it’s also taken a long time to learn all these particular Eagle-isms.
Yeah, the locations of stuff is confusing. I still get confused with setting up the DRC. I would suggest mapping different “views” to hotkeys. Example: I use F11 as my view key. Plain F11 gives me all the basics: Top and bottom copper, silkscreen, holes, pads, vias, etc. CTRL+F11 hides the silkscreen for easier routing. ALT+F11 shows silkscreen and cream layers so I know where to put solder paste. Finally, CTRL+ALT+F11 shows copper and stop mask.
I’ve attached my shortcut setting script. It’s based off of Sparkfun’s, but modified to fit my needs.