AVE reads plain ASCII files that contain the Julian dates and the differential magnitude. If you use the LAIA software, you do not need to worry about the file and its format as it does it all for you.

Every night is shown using a different color. This helps you to identify the good and bad nights (from a photometric stand point). AVE calculates and adjusts the scales automatically, so the light curve is shown at full amplitude.

There are context menus. It is possible to configure several items of the light curve graphic. As AVE recognizes points made in different nights, you can go to the tool/menu option of Nights to obtain the light curve night by night. Scale is adjusted automatically for every night.

Beside surfing by nights, AVE allows us to mark intervals on the X axis (abcises) and the curve adjusts it self (Y axis too if needed) to the new interval.

A dialog box asks us for an interval of periodes where to look for, number of samples inside the interval and to select an algorithm (as there are different algorithms to find a periode in a cloud of points). The AVE sets a merit function (depends on the algorithm selected) for each sample. Then, by simply having a look to the Periode/Merit function graphic, you can determine the possible periodes of the data.

It determines several minima and the exact moment of each one of them. Minima are identified using the Van Woerden method and it can be configured to adapt to your curves (i.e. in case of having a few dots).