How to trim the silk from text string over vias and pads.

[Erick Setubal]

On my current project, I am developing an internal development board so in order to make the developer experience good I write a lot on the board to identify everything easily.

When I was positioning the text I was taking care to not cover any pad but it is difficult to position the text without covering any via, is there any command or option where I could trim the text that is over the via? I want to remove enough silk until the clearance rule is respected. I know that there are some Gerber Editors that can make it.

[robertferanec]

I have never needed to use this - so, I was not really looking for this kind of rule. Usually, I cover all the VIAs by mask and it is not problem when silkscreen goes over VIA. For bigger board with bigger VIAs I try to avoid placing text over VIAs as I would like to keep it readable.

You may be able to create a rule to identify text over VIA, but I do not think you can make a rule which will automatically remove part of the text over VIA. I am not sure if this is automatically supported in Altium. I know, in Allegro, you can create a special layer called Autosilk, but in Altium I have not seen any function like this.

PS: Also, I believe, if needed, the PCB manufacturer will usually remove the text over VIA.