Spacing in headline between number and text

Question

How do I change the spacing between the number and the title of a section? I would like to have the following:

1.(1cm space)Section name

Answer 1

This adjusts the space for all section headings, and also for sub(sub)sections to 1cm:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand*{\@seccntformat}[1]{\csname the#1\endcsname\hspace{1cm}}
\makeatother

You can modify this redefinition as you desire. It works with KOMA-Script classes as well, as I notice your koma-script tag.

Answer 2

The "1.", "(1cm space)" and "Section name" are each components of the sectional command and, the titlesec package provides commands for manipulating this, and much more. Specifically, titlesec provides

\titleformat{<command>}[<shape>]{<format>}{<label>}{<sep>}{<before-code>}[<after-code>]

to change the format of a sectional title. You could use the latter in the following way:

\usepackage{titlesec}% Http://ctan.org/pkg/titlesec
...
\titleformat{\section}{\bfseries\sffamily\large}{\thesection.}{\hspace{1cm}}{}%

which typesets \section in \bfseries (bold), \sffamily (sans serif) and \large, with a period . after the section number \thesection, followed by a 1cm gap and then the title. This is what it looks like if you only modify the \section format as given above: