  It is extremely difficult to simulate the details of coronal heating and also
make meaningful predictions of the emitted radiation. Thus, testing realistic
models with observations is a major challenge. Observational signatures of
coronal heating depend crucially on radiation, thermal conduction, and the
exchange of mass and energy with the transition region and chromosphere below.
Many magnetohydrodynamic simulation studies do not include these effects,
opting instead to devote computational resources to the magnetic aspects of the
problem. We have developed a simple method of accounting approximately for the
missing effects. It is applied to the simulation output post facto and
therefore may be a valuable tool for many studies. We have used it to predict
the emission from a model corona that is driven by vortical boundary motions
meant to represent photospheric convection. We find that individual magnetic
strands experience short-term brightenings, both scattered throughout the
computational volume and in localized clusters. The former may explain the
diffuse component of the observed corona, while the latter may explain bright
coronal loops. Several observed properties of loops are reproduced reasonably
well: width, lifetime, and quasi-circular cross-section (aspect ratio not
large). Our results lend support to the idea that loops are multi-stranded
structures heated by "storms" of nanoflares.
