The KiCad EDA Library Conventions specify naming conventions for many things, but net names is not listed among them.
Filenames, symbol names, footprint names, model names, 3D model names, and template names must contain only valid characters, as determined below:
- Alphanumeric characters (
A-Z,a-z,0-9)- Underscore
_- Hyphen / dash
-- Period / dot
.- Comma
,- Plus symbol
+This character set ensures that symbols will be compatible with all filesystems, and will not cause any issues due to character rendering.
Further, filenames and symbol names must not use the space character. This can cause issues with string escaping and is best avoided.
Is the . period a reserved character due to its association with busses, or may it be used freely inside and outside of busses?
.
From the KiCAD documentation, the only things I could find were:
Labels :
A net can only have one name. If two different labels are placed on the same net, an ERC violation will be generated. Only one of the net names will be used in the netlist. The final net name is determined according to the rules described below.
(Note: The rules described below is a broken link - it doesn’t lead anywhere.)
Buses : Bus members :
The members of the group are listed inside curly braces (
{}) separated by space characters. An optional name for the group goes before the opening curly brace. If the group bus is unnamed, the resulting nets on the PCB will just be the signal names inside the group. If the group bus has a name, the resulting nets will have the name as a prefix, with a period (.) separating the prefix from the signal name.