what is the ".designator" used for in footprints?

[key14SG8J]

New user.  In creating the layout, several components show up with a ".designator" label.  What is this?  The graphics interferes with viewing other parts on the layout.  Is there a way to turn off this label?  I notice that it is a on the footprints of several components that I am using.  I hesitate to delete it from the footprint, not knowing exactly why it is there.

Key1

[key14SG8J]

I did not receive any replies to my original question.  I am supplying some additional information for the forum.  For some components, the ".designator" shows up in the footprint as text on my layer 51 tDocu, and then on the part in the board layout view.  It appears that this text shows up on parts that have a heatsink feature on the bottom of the chip (high current diodes, IC's, transistors).  I don't know what the preceding "." means in terms of Eagle control.  The text is bothersome in that it interferes with my view of other component details.  I would like to suppress this text in the board layout view.  I have attached a library with this .designator included.

Thanks,

DIck

[mtl_asm · Accepted solution]

you can just open the footprint in the library editor and delete that text. then save the library and update. when you place the part it will not be there.

if you have nothing else on layer 51 you can also just disable that layer being displayed by typing 

display -tdocu

if you dont want to edit the part. 

[key14SG8J · Accepted solution]

Why is it there to begin with?  Is the "." a control character of some kind, like ">"?  Otherwise, your suggested solutions is good and works!  Thanks!

[mtl_asm]

im not sure why it was there to begin with. where did you get the part from? it looked a bit like the result of an autogenerated part or a translation due to all the text being piled up in the middle... maybe .designator is an artifact of that?

afaik .designator has no special meaning in eagle. if you have a ">" at the start of a text in a part symbol or footprint  it maps to the attribute named whatever the following text is. ie >NAME will display whatever the attribute NAME is set to, if you add your own attributes it still uses ">" so im not sure that "." has any meaning.