Some SIMS may have their advantage indeed... now i'm from the old school, and the old approach always serves me well.

Yes i agree there's some good point in a sim, but 'till now none of what's already on the market tun me on. 'Till now i think only NI MultiSim got more points than other... but to sim PIC or else micro... the list is just too limited.

Proteus... is probably the best for what we do... but it's actually a pain to use and a little bit too limited on the analog section. I read it could be possible to ask for some model if needed. If free SPICE model where easy to plug-in... now it could bee much cool. Maybe they're actually work on something like that... who knows?

This said, they're suppose to send me their latest version (7.0) in the next days/week. I'll give a better test drive..

For the PCB... all good point as well. But if you really want to sim a PCB with every possible situation, you would have to enter tons of parameters first, and IF the Sims can do it... you would probably have never saved any time.

If a SIM coulod do the exact job (PCB, digital, analog... ) and was 100% reliable... it's cost will certainely be more than 1,2 thousands dollars. Wich is something a hobbyist would never afford or be tempted by.

Sure todays component size makes the prototyping task a little bit hard, but it's still doable, even with home-made PCBs.

Oh well, maybe SIM are the future, but for now, i still prefer the good ol' method.