If there are no fudicials

[JuKu]

Glad it worked in your case. In general, you do want to use copper features for fiducials, since the silkscreen printing might have alignment issues with the pads. apparently, your manufacturer doesn't.

[Danal]

Glad it worked in your case. In general, you do want to use copper features for fiducials, since the silkscreen printing might have alignment issues with the pads. apparently, your manufacturer doesn't.

Completely understood and agreed. Fiducials have copper in them as an industry standard so that fiducials align with... wait for it... wait for it... copper!!.

When designing future boards, absolutely I will add standard fiducials... only even considering a silk layer solution because of the 500 or so boards that I've already got...

Of course, the true ideal for existing non-fiducial boards would be to allow 'fiducial recognition' to find square objects, because then individual pads could be used for alignment, copper-to-copper.