Yeah, I was having trouble with an assembly house because their board fab wanted to clip the silkscreen for a large diameter around vias and parts to the point it was compromising readability. They were concerned with covering the vias (tented vias) causing problems in assembly. Filling the vias is ok, covering them with trapped air and moisture inside is not. house After discussing it with the board house we came to an agreement to not clip the silkscreen so badly.
The point is any assembly house is going to resist assembling a board with tented vias. If you are soldering at home, no problem.
@ilium007 Have you made sure that pin 9 is attached to GND in your schematic? Sometimes I will use schematic symbol that doesn’t have the thermal pad of the footprint I have chosen called out. You may have to tweak your schematic symbol to make sure Pcbnew knows that pad 9 is connected to GND. Some parts will have an SOIC-8 without a thermal pad, but their smaller package footprints do have a pad.