Analysing a Recording

You have a recording from a simulation or site measurement and need to understand what happened. This guide walks you through a complete analysis session — from loading the file to annotating your findings.

Load the file

Drag your file from the file explorer into the Cute Plot window. It appears in the sidebar immediately.

For large files (over 2 GB), Cute Plot automatically uses lazy loading — it previews the first 200 rows and loads full data on demand when you plot a series. You don't need to configure anything.

Find the signals you care about

Click the file in the sidebar to expand it and see all available series. For files with many columns, use the search bar at the top of the sidebar.

The search supports boolean logic and wildcards. For example:

• voltage — find all voltage-related series
• voltage & phase_a — find series matching both terms
• Volt* | Curr* — find series starting with "Volt" or "Curr"
• !reactive — exclude reactive power series

See Search Function for the full query syntax including time-based filtering.

Set up your plot layout

Use the Rows and Columns sliders at the bottom of the plot area to create your subplot grid. A common layout for event analysis is 2 rows, 1 column — voltages on top, currents on the bottom.

Select the series you want and drag them to the appropriate subplot. Each series gets a distinct color automatically.

Zoom to the event

Navigate to the area of interest:

• Scroll to zoom in gradually
• Right-click and drag to draw a zoom rectangle around the event for precision
• Middle-click and drag to pan to a different time region
• Double-click to reset and fit all data

The X-axis is synchronized across all subplots, so zooming in one subplot zooms them all — keeping your voltage and current views aligned in time.

Measure key values

Hold Ctrl and drag to create a query rectangle over the region you want to analyze. A statistics popup appears with min, max, mean, standard deviation, and count for each series in the rectangle.

To analyze specific time windows:

• Draw a rectangle over the pre-event steady state to get baseline values
• Draw another over the during-event period to measure the disturbance
• Draw a third over the post-event recovery to verify return to normal

Enable additional calculations in Settings → Query Options — including RMS, rise time, settling time, damping ratio, and FFT analysis. See Query & Analysis Tools for details on each statistic.

Apply transformations if needed

If your data needs scaling or shifting, use the transformation controls in the series legend. Each plotted series has sliders for:

• Y Multiply — scale the amplitude (e.g., multiply by 100 to convert per-unit to percentage)
• Y Add — shift the baseline (e.g., subtract a DC offset)
• X Multiply — scale the time axis (e.g., convert seconds to milliseconds)
• X Add — shift the time origin (e.g., align two signals to the same starting point)

All transformations are non-destructive — your original data is never modified. Click Reset to return to the original values. See Data Transformations for the full reference.

Annotate your findings

Right-click in the plot and use Add Annotations to mark what you've found:

• Add a horizontal line at threshold values (e.g., 0.95 pu and 1.05 pu voltage limits)
• Add a vertical line at key time instants (e.g., fault initiation, protection operation, recovery)
• Add a linked vertical line to mark the same instant across all subplots
• Add a text label to describe what's happening ("Fault clears at t = 1.1 s")

Drag any annotation to reposition it. Horizontal lines automatically detect intersections with your plotted series. See Annotations for details.

Take a screenshot

Click the Take Screenshot button to save your annotated view as a PNG. The screenshot captures exactly what's visible on screen, including all subplots, annotations, and legends.

For polished report output, see Creating Report-Ready Plots.