Creating reconstructions

To create a new reconstruction, firstly go to "File" and then click on "New".

Reconstruction settings

This will give you a few settings:

• Solver: Name of the solver.
• Details: Details about the reconstruction, e.g. "9.42 OH WR average" or "4.73 single".
• Competition: The competition where the solve(s) happened. If it was not official, just put "Unofficial".
• Video link: Link to the video of the solve(s). May be left empty.
• Puzzle: The used puzzle (currently only nxnxns), standard is 3x3x3.
• Method: The method that the puzzle was solved with. This is used for statistics.
• FPS: The FPS of the video, may be set to any value if not used.
• Time input type: Either Total time needed, Total frames needed, Time at start or Frame at start. Times with frames are calculated using the given FPS. "Total" means that the time you give indicates the duration of the step, "at start" means that the time you give indicates the point in time when the step started. For the former, the last time may be left out to let the program calculate it so that the full solve time is reached.
• Solution separator: Standard is ",". It is used to separate the data for each step. For more information on this, keep on reading.
• Auto fill steps: Currently work in progress. It automatically fills in the step names for you when you leave them blank. The functionality of this option may be changed in the future. If you are unsure, just leave it disabled for now.

Note that solver, details and competition form the title of the reconstruction in the format "Solver - Details - Competition".

To finish, click on "Save". This will create a new tab and show you the reconstruction in the main window.

Adding and configuring solves

Now that you have set all basic settings, you can start adding solves.
To add a new solve (one should always be present by standard), go to the top and click the button "Add solve". That solve will be added at the end of all of the previous solves. You can remove it using the "Remove solve" button, put a scramble in the scramble text field and input the time (all penalties applied except for DNF) in the text field on the right. To see the solve on a website (currently ACN), click the "Open link" button which will (hopefully) make your default browser open the link.
On the right of the solve, there's a "virtual cube" (just a non-rotatable image created using VisualCube) and on the bottom, you can see a table with the statistics of the solve.
If you scroll down, you can see the statistics for all of your solves. This will include Mean and Best from each field (for 3 solves and higher) and the Average of your solves calculated using the 5% rule (for 5+ solves).
To adjust the options you set earlier, click the button "Settings" on the upper left-hand corner.

How to write the solution down

In the solution text field, you can type a step of the solution in the format Time, Moves, Step name, [Optional statistics to contribute to] (replace the , with your solution separator). Each step belongs on its own line.
The time for your step is parsed differently depending on the time input type you chose. For example, if you gave the step "Cross" a time of 6.1, this would mean that the Cross took 6.1 seconds if you chose "Total time", while if you chose "Time at start", it would mean that the Cross started at 6.1 seconds.
The moves are now just standard notation. For nxnxns, everything ACN supports should also work here (including pauses, indicated by a dot, .). One special thing to note is that you can also use parentheses for grouping moves together. For example, if L and R' were executed simultaneously, you could write (L R'), which will give you a movecount of 1 instead of 2 ETM without the parentheses. Parentheses only work with ETM, they have no effect for STM. Please do not put anything else like triggers or cancellations in parentheses, as these will also only be counted as 1 ETM.
The step name is just what the step is called. This must follow standard conventions (for good examples, see the r/econstructions subreddit), otherwise the method won't recognize the step and it will not count towards statistics. The most important convention is that the first letter is always capitalized while the rest is not (unless it's an acronym, in which case everything is capitalized). For CFOP, a basic solve consists of Cross, 1st pair, 2nd pair, 3rd pair, 4th pair, OLL and PLL.
Finally, the optional statistics to contribute to are, as the name suggests, optional and only rarely needed. Multiple statistics names like F2L, Cross+1, OLS etc. can be added so that this step is counted in those statistics. This is only useful when the method doesn't recognize your step but you still want it to be counted in the correct statistics. One use case is in John Smith's 4th solve of his 6.42 ZZ Ao5, where he solves the last slot and last layer using an L3C algorithm. Here, that step should be added to F2L and OLS (it is always added to Total automatically).

Special steps

To cause more confusion use steps that shouldn't contribute to statistics in the way normal steps do (e.g. Inspection shouldn't count towards movecount), special steps were added.
There are four kinds of special steps: Comment, Inspection, Penalty and Offset

• Comment is pretty simple. Create a step without any moves or time given and it'll create a comment in the solution.
• Inspection is also very easy. Just name the step Inspection (upper-case!), don't give a time and only use rotations. Tada, it won't count towards the movecount anymore!
• Penalty also isn't as bad as you might expect. The step is just given the name Penalty without any moves and the penalty time is given as the time (this time is always the time of the added penalty, no matter what time input type you selected). A +2 is represented as a time of 2, a DNF as a time of DNF (internally represented as infinity). You can also have a +0.01 penalty, but please just don't do it.
• Offset is also not that hard. If you're a competent reconstructor (i.e. not me), you actually won't even need this. All it does is offset all subsequent moves by the given rotations if you give it a name of Offset and don't set any time (leave it blank). This can be useful if you can't see the solve from the solver's perspective, though I guess you could also just mirror it in your head.

Example

Finally, the following is an example of a Joseph Tudor's 8.04 PR single in this notation, using the "Time at start" time input type:

,y2,Offset
,x2 y,Inspection
8.35,U' M U l' L' D' R U L2 D2,EOCross
10.32,x x' U' L U L' U' L U L' U' L U L',1st pair
11.46,U' R' U2 R U2' l' B l,2nd pair
12.56,x x' U' L' R U' R',3rd pair
14.28,U L, 4th pair
14.53,U U' M2 U M U U M' U M2,PLL

Also have a look at the exports and the video of me reconstructing the solve.

Saving and exporting your reconstruction

To save your reconstruction, go to "File" and either "Save" (will save to the current file or make you choose one if it hasn't been saved yet) or "Save as..." (will make you choose a file location). A file in .json format will be created which contains your reconstruction. To import it at a later point, go to "File", "Open..." and select it.
To export your reconstruction to a human-readable format, click at the "Export" button. If you only want to export one solve of the average, go to that solve and click the button "Export solve". If you want to export the full reconstruction with all solves, go to the top and click the button "Export reconstruction".
Now, a window will open. In the bottom left-hand corner, you can choose the format you want to export to. It will then convert your reconstruction and you can view the converted text in the output text field. You can either copy it to your clipboard or save it as a file using the buttons.
Going back to the available formats, the following shows each of them with a small description:

• Plain text: Just plain text, without any markup. Can be used everywhere (e.g. Pastebin). Plain text is the smallest format you can export to file-size wise since it doesn't require special formatting. One slight issue is that tables might not look great when viewed using a font that isn't mono-space.
• Markdown: By far the most used format, can be used on Reddit, GitHub gist and lots of other places. It's pretty lightweight and still human readable without any formatting applied.
• BBCode: Very long and hard to read in text form. The only reason I added this is because of the SpeedSolving Forums. However, it does look pretty good when formatted because of colors and spoilers.