I have a circuit with a cpu that I would like to connect each pin to a connector. Rather than have the wiring look like spaghetti, I would like to use some form of labels.
I have never done this. So do I use the global label icon for this? If I label two pins with the same name, are they electrically connected?
labels come in flavors:
You create a label and ‘connect’ it to the pin/wires you want to be on that net. If you copy/recreate a label of the same kind and connect it to another pin/wire they will be connected to that net.
PS: To get a net that you can actually ‘see’ in PCBnew as ratsnest you need to have at least 2 pins connected (either via labels or wires), otherwise it won’t be a net that makes it into the netlist.
PPS: local labels and hierarchical labels are most commonly used. Global labels are most common from the power symbols. With globals you must be careful as they work globally - if you reuse sheets in other projects it usually is better to use local/hierarchical labels instead of global labels as it makes the sheets easier to include without modifications to the label IDs.
Thanks,
That is enough info for me to experiment and know what results I should get.
It is worth noting that before posting the question I did a Utube and Google search.
The only information I found was on Buss wires and multi-sheet hierarchical labels.
It seems odd this is not commonly discussed - maybe everyone assumes biginners
know about it. Thanks again 
http://docs.kicad.org/en/eeschema.html#wires-buses-labels-power-ports
http://docs.kicad.org/en/eeschema.html#local-hierarchical-and-global-labels
Hi, Rene and Sparky: Rene’s link of March 2018 is broken.
I am puzzled:
My schematic is 1 sheet; no hierarchy pages.
The default netnames are mostly resistor pins which I find unhelpful in visually relating the pcb to the schematic. So I started by assigning a few global labels based upon pin numbers of one IC.
This seemed to help at first, but then I wanted to change one of my labels. Now I seem to be stuck with some errors and unable to change some wrong labels even when I seem to have successfully added some correct labels.
Part of my problem is caused by need to understand precise keystroke mouse click sequence when assigning these labels. I found I could hide them by setting text size to zero, but maybe this was a bad idea. Now I decided to just make them smaller but big enough to read and unique color for these labels.
4.1) It looks like we can have different global labels on one net (??)
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH After posting the above I 93.49% answered my own question. I needed to physically delete the old labels from the schematic wires. The zero size labels were part of the problem because they were hard to see but they are visible. I guess I need to keep the labels more visible.
Version information:
Application: kicad
Version: (5.0.2)-1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
libcurl/7.61.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1 (WinSSL) zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.6 libidn2/2.0.5 libpsl/0.20.2 (+libidn2/2.0.5) nghttp2/1.34.0
Platform: Windows 8 (build 9200), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Build Info:
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Boost: 1.68.0
OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
Curl: 7.61.1
Compiler: GCC 8.2.0 with C++ ABI 1013
Build settings:
USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
KICAD_SPICE=ON
The documentation of labels is anything but clear in the manual(s). They may be fine for users coming from eagle, orcad, etc. but not for new designers.