Loading and Saving Signals and 3D Graphics

Loading signals: After you select the File/Open signal option from the menu or the button from the toolbar, the Open signal dialog will appear. In this dialog, you can select a file type and the name(s) of the file(s) that you want to load in SIGVIEW.

You can also use drag 'n drop to drag one or more files from Windows Explorer and drop them into the SIGVIEW window. The effect will be the same as if loading these files through the Open file dialog.

Loading compressed signals: Compressed signal file formats such as MP3 or WMA require a special decoder component to be opened (codec). These components are not included in SIGVIEW, but are more than likely already installed in your system. SIGVIEW uses Microsoft DirectX technology and codecs already installed in your system for file decompression. This ensures that any file playable on your computer (for example in Windows Media Player) will most likely also be readable by SIGVIEW.

Loading very long signals: Since SIGVIEW loads the complete signal in the RAM memory of your computer, a maximum size of one signal will depend on your system configuration. If you try loading a longer signal, SIGVIEW will report that it cannot allocate sufficient memory for it and offer you the option to load a smaller part of the signal which can fit in the memory.

Saving signals: You can save a signal if you select the File/Save signal as… option or the toolbar button. SIGVIEW can save signals in WAV format (16-bit integer or 32-bit float) or export them as ASCII/CSV or raw binary files. Saving signals to a WAV file is only possible for signals with integer sampling rate. Also, please note that a 16-bit WAV format supports only integer sample values; this means that all values from your signal will be rounded before saving those in a WAV file. If you do not want this to happen, you can save your signal in a 32-bit floating point WAV format. Regardless of the visible part of the signal in your window, this menu option will save the whole signal in a file. You can save only the visible (currently zoomed in) part of the signal by using the “Save visible signal part as…” menu option. For saving multi-channel signals, please see the chapter on ‘Saving multi-channel signals’.

Replacing the file: If you want to perform the same analysis on several similar signals, there is an easy way to do it: you can create the complete analysis system for the first signal and reuse it for all others. Just replace the signal with some other signal by selecting the File/Replace with... option from the menu and observe the results. The only restriction is that both original and replacement files must be of the same length and sample rate.

ASCII/CSV files: By using main menu options File/ASCII/CSV files/... or the toolbar button, you can also export/import signals in a standard tab, comma or semicolon separated ASCII format. Here is an example of a TAB delimited file:

X value<TAB>Y value channel1<TAB>Y value channel 2<TAB>...Y value channel N<new line>

There are also separate menu options for loading ASCII files using a dot as a decimal separator (default) and comma (used in Europe).

If possible, the first row of the ASCII/CSV file will be interpreted as column names and will be used to generate window titles of each loaded signal window.

When you export your signal to an ASCII/CSV format from SIGVIEW, there are two options available: Export signal (X/Y values) will export both X and Y values and Export signal (Y values) will export only Y values.

When loading ASCII/CSV files, SIGVIEW will try to analyze the first data column to see if it can be used as X-axis values (if values are equidistant). If yes, you will be asked if you would like to use the calculated sampling rate for the loaded signal. If the calculation was not 100% correct, as a result of insufficient data in the file, you can still accept this value and change it later through the Edit/Sample rate change menu option.

For saving multi-channel ASCII/CSV files, please see ‘Saving multi-channel signals’.

Please note that SIGVIEW saves only a visible (zoomed in) part of the signal. If you want to save the whole signal, use the zoom-out option first. If you have your data already loaded in some other application, for example Microsoft Excel, the ASCII/CSV file format would be the perfect file format for data exchange. Just save your data in the other application as a tab delimited TXT/ASCII file, and import it into SIGVIEW afterwards.

Exporting 3D graphics values in file: By using the main menu option File/ASCII/CSV files/Export 3D-graphics, you can export all values from the visible part of the 3D graphics in one text file. There are 3 options: export in a file with X,Y,Z triples in 3 columns (tab delimited), export a matrix where the first row contains X values, first column Y values and the remainder of the file are Z values (tab delimited) and finally, inverted variant of the second matrix format (with switched rows and columns). All of these file types can be loaded by, for example, MS Excel for further analysis.

Multi-channel files

If you load a file containing multiple signals, each signal will be loaded in a separate signal window. All signal windows originating from the same file will be automatically synchronized.

Pasting signal values from clipboard

As an alternative to loading CSV/ASCII values from a file, you can also paste signals in CSV/ASCII format from the clipboard into a new signal window. This function is available by selecting the File/Signal from clipboard data... (ASCII / CSV) menu option. All rules regarding format are the same as for loading CSV/ASCII files.

If your CSV/ASCII data uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal dot, you can set this in the ‘Application settings dialog’.