I haven't been doing any work in Electronics for a long time and was looking to get back into it, but when I did, we used to use some software called Crocodile Clips to simulate our circuits. Recently I've been looking at the simulators that are popular today and have been trying out the Multisim and Proteus demos. They seem to be a lot more advanced than Crocodile Clips, but the one thing I've noticed is that they don't show you when a component is being overloaded/damaged. For example, in Crocodile clips, if you were to overload an LED by giving it too much power, it would show as being damaged, of if it wasn't getting enough power, it would show dimmer. I've found this to be very helpful in the larning stages and was wondering why the top simulators don't also do this? ... that is unless Im missing something.

Is it just a case of having to put Voltmeters/ameters all over the place to check that components aren't being overloaded/getting enough power?

 

hi trans.
Most Simulator programs are written to simulate a circuit you have already designed and not for designing the circuit for you.

I would recommend the free LTSpice simulator program, the learning curve can be a little steep, but there is a free online Yahoo LTS user group with loads of help and examples.

Eric
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/LTspice/files/%20Lib?prop=eupdatehttp://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/LTspice/files/%2520Lib%3fprop=eupdate

 

I also recommend LTspice as it's a good version of Spice (most common analog simulator) and used by many on these electronic forums so they can often answer your questions about it and help you with your simulations.

It doesn't warn you about overloads but, after simulating a circuit in the transient (time-domain) mode, if you click the cursor while over a part it will plot the current through the part. If you click while also pressing the ALT key over the part, it will plot the power being dissipated in the part. You can also plot the voltage drop across a part using waveform arithmetic. From all these you can determine if any of the part's maximum ratings are being exceeded.

 

This one is free and pretty neat. It is not a spice sim but worth a look. http://www.falstad.com/circuit/index.html