It depends what you're after.  If you want a hobbyist-level
introduction, you could use Circad from holophase.com.  It's free demo
version is legal to use by hobbyists and is fully functional for any
size board except that it doesn't produce gerbers and export Protel.
However, you *can* print your PCB and etch your own.  In my opinion,
Circad at $1000 (commercial version) is the best of the <$10,000 tools
in sheer usability (I haven't tried any that are more expensive than
that).  It has a good but terse introductory tutorial in its help file.

I use Circad commercially and have laid out 6-layer BGA boards with it.
It is perfect for what I need.  But the reason I say a hobbyist-level
introduction is that hobbyists seem to be its main user base and it is
not compatible with anything else.  If that doesn't bother you, it is
great for commercial use, too.

Cheers,
Berwyn


At 11:27 AM 1/5/2006, Brooks,Bill wrote:
>I'm looking for some advice from the design community...
>
>If you were tasked with teaching someone who had zero experience with
PCB
>design how to design boards, what software tool would you choose to use
as a
>beginner's platform upon which to build their education and teach them
the
>fundamentals? And Why?
>

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