Every bench has a multimeter, and every beginner has pointed one at a circuit and received an answer they did not know how to interpret. de:volt's meter is deliberately faithful to that experience, including the interpretive part: its readouts distinguish "zero", "no path", and "I cannot know that", and learning which is which is the fastest multimeter education there is.

Getting the probes on

Choose Meter in the Analysis rail (or tick Multimeter in the View menu) and a floating two-probe meter appears. Drag the red and black probe tips to component pins or breadboard holes; a snapped tip stays with its node while you pan and zoom, and the black probe helpfully starts on ground when your circuit has one. HOLD freezes the displayed reading, which is the polite way to screenshot a moving number.

Build anything from this week (the divider from the potentiometer post is perfect) and probe as you read.

The four dial positions

• AUTO does what the physical auto-ranging meters do: continuity when both probes land on the same node, DC voltage otherwise. Continuity beeps below 50 Ω.
• V reads V(red) minus V(black) from the last solved state. Across the pot's wiper and ground: 2.50 V at half travel. Swap the probes and it reads −2.50 V, a sign convention your first physical meter will also teach you abruptly.
• Ω reads the resistance of the plain-resistor network between the probes: series and parallel combinations solved properly, failed-open resistors excluded, and everything that is not an ordinary resistor treated as open. Probe across your 10 kΩ pull-up alone and read 10.00 kΩ; probe across the pot's track ends and read its full value regardless of the knob.
• A reads a branch current, with conditions attached, which deserves its own section.

Why current mode is picky

A real ammeter goes in series: you break the circuit and make the current flow through the meter. de:volt's meter deliberately does not insert itself (it is an ideal observer, adding no burden), so instead it reports a current only when the probes straddle exactly one two-terminal component whose telemetry gives an unambiguous signed value. Across your 220 Ω LED resistor: 14 mA, signed by direction. Across a parallel pair, or from a random hole to another random hole: a dash, because "the current between these two points" has no single honest answer there.

That dash is a teaching moment, not a failure. The meter distinguishes three outcomes and says which one you got:

• A number: the solved state supports it.
• OL, in resistance mode: no supported resistive path connects the probes, the same overload/open indication a physical meter shows.
• ---: the value exists in principle but cannot be determined unambiguously, and the meter would rather admit that than guess. It is never treated as zero.

What the meter tells you it is not

Open honesty is the design: the meter's own disclosure says it adds no probe resistance, no ammeter burden, no ohms-test current. The resistance mode is a topology calculation, not a physical injection, so unlike your bench meter it cannot be fooled by an energised circuit, and also cannot warn you about one; the habit of de-energising before ohms measurements still belongs in your hands. Where that loading matters to the circuit under test, model it explicitly with a resistor.

One more workflow habit: the meter reads the solved state even while paused. Pause the simulation at an interesting moment (mid pulse, mid charge) and probe at leisure; the numbers hold still because time is holding still.

The full mode-by-mode contract is at docs.devoltapp.com/user/oscilloscope-and-analysis, one section above the scope material we covered earlier this week. Tomorrow: getting circuits out of the simulator, from PNG screenshots to a parts list you can shop from.