NPTH (Non-Plated Thru Holes)

When creating a Non-Plated Hole such as a Tooling Hole if you forget to uncheck the Plated option you will most likely get a technical inquiry from your fabricator.

I wish there was a design rule check under the Manufacturing Rules to catch this mistake.

As shown below the pad and hole are set to the same size to create a NPTH. However the user forgot to uncheck the plated option.

To find a NPTH that is incorrectly checked as Plated you can use this PCB Filter:

(PadIsPlated = 'True') And ((HoleDiameter >= PadXSize_AllLayers ) OR (HoleDiameter >= PadYSize_AllLayers))

Copper Clearance Rule (Standard is 10mil)

Plane Clearance Rule

For Non Plated Holes (if Plated is unchecked) you can use:

(HoleDiameter > 0) And (PadIsPlated = 'False') 

For both Plated or Non Plated Holes use:

((HoleDiameter >= PadXSize_AllLayers ) OR (HoleDiameter >= PadYSize_AllLayers))


Soldermask Expansion (Standard is 5mil from Hole Edge)

If the Soldermask and Copper clearances are both 10mil.  The 10mil copper clearance is good for the internal layers, but what about the outer layers ?

To prevent having a NPTH with exposed metal on the outer layers you need to consider the layer registration tolerances.

That's It !