We don’t require fiducials here. It’s not mandatory. That’s because we live in a prototype world and in that world, theory doesn’t always match up with reality. That being said, there are things we can do and things we would prefer to do. Personally, I would prefer to get some ice cream, but my belt suggests otherwise.

So we do like fiducials, which begs the question: “How do we like them?” Well, the objective of a fiducial is to make machine registration of your PCB easy. That means the pattern should not be reversible. It should only have one correct orientation. Use three of them separated as far apart from each other on the board as you can. But don’t put them any closer than 4.75mm from the edge. Ideally, it would be a 1mm copper area centered in a 3mm circle with no solder mask. Oh, and all of the fiducials on the board should look the same and be the same size.

Duane Benson
Over easy, yolk not broken.

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/