What's the deal with the Pad2Silk clearances?

I sometimes have silk overlap a pad. In desperation, on a dense board, I have to put the ref designator plop onto the part. Mounting hole designators too, X1 and such, go right on the big annular ring.

The PCB houses fix it without comment. They don't put silk on pads.

Your layout program should have a feature to clip the silkscreen layer around pads. Still, it's hard to get PCB makers to make the boards as you specify them. Seems they think the customer is always wrong.

The problem I've had is getting them to write silkscreen over vias. They want to clip as if they were pads and cite issues with tented vias. I can get them to compromise on a very small clip around the via drill. Otherwise I have no place to put the refdes.

In general it is a bad idea to have silkscreen on the pads. Pads are for solder... usually.

if you put silk screen on a pad you can't solder it and if you can't solder why is it a pad?

Like Larkin said, some "pads" are mechanical. I suppose they could be covered with solder mask, but I think the vendor will still see them as pads and clip the solder mask as well. It always seems like a struggle getting a board made without some people interfering when they don't have a stake. The assembly house would care, but I've even asked them about layouts before I send them off and they never want to offer an opinion.

the solder mask layer is the difference between a pad and a trace, layout programs often have an option to clip the silk screen lay with the solder mask layer, assume manufacturers do the same