Labels and text
Symbols, wires and containers all take a label, and all three follow the same rules.
Setting one
Select the thing and type into Label in the properties panel. Right-clicking opens the same card at the cursor.
Labels hold two lines — put a newline in and you get one.
Size, offset and colour
Each label can set its own size, offset and colour. Any it does not set is inherited from the document’s defaults, which you edit with nothing selected.
An empty field in the panel is not blank — it shows you what it inherits. So you can see the value that applies without having to commit to it, and clearing a field puts the label back under the document default rather than setting it to nothing.
Size is a factor, not a point size. A label at 1.5 is half again the size of the
default, whatever that default becomes. This is what lets a whole diagram’s text be
retuned in one place — and it matters when you scale a figure down to a column width,
because the text scales with the drawing.
Offset is in page axes. +X moves a label right and +Y moves it up, whichever way
the symbol is rotated. That is the opposite of what a naive implementation does, and it
is deliberate: you are nudging the text on the page you are looking at, not in the
symbol’s own frame, so a rotated part’s label moves the way your eye expects.
You can also just drag a label on the canvas, which sets the same offset.
Making a label say what a parameter says
Type a parameter’s name in braces and the label reads its value:
{wavelength_nm}
on a laser draws 1550, and keeps drawing the right thing when you change the parameter.
This is how a diagram stays correct: the number appears once, in the parameter, and the
label is a view of it.
Two rules worth knowing, and they are different on purpose:
- A
{name}you typed that matches nothing draws the placeholder text unchanged — a typo has to be findable. - A default nobody typed, referring to a parameter the symbol does not have, draws nothing.
Labels and routing
A label is part of the obstacle a wire routes around. Moving a label therefore moves the wires — which is sometimes the easiest way to unpick a cramped corner.
Free-standing text
The Misc library has text and annotation symbols for notes, titles and callouts that are not attached to any component. They follow the same size rule as every other label.