I would beg to differ with this statement. There is of course a benefit to the owner of the design and end product being produced in the value of increased repeatability on the placement of surface mount parts. However there is a _huge_ benefit for fiducials on boards for the board assembly house. Some assembly shops will actually _require_ the presence of fiducials for certain types and models of pick and place machines. They may also be required by the shop for certain types of part footprints or part pad densities. Without these present on your raw board fabs they may send you away till you come back with boards having these present. The need and benefit to the assembly folks is to to permit them to accurately place parts so as to build working assemblies and keep happy customers coming back for more business.

Even the bare board manufactures can benefit from fiducials (targets) of certain types because then can be used to help line up artwork layers during the board fab process.

Possibly the only party that does not directly benefit from the inclusion of fiducials on boards is the end customer that purchases the end product. And even they benefit indirectly to some degree in the increased reliability that can occur from parts mounted fair and square on their mounting pads.

Michael Karas