I am a little more with Per on this matter where he states that people need to think more rather than picking up a piece of equipment that could make the time spent more costly. I do think that green thumbs out in the field should not be using the newest and greatest software or equipment. The time spent learning such tools is just unfathomable and they also tend to miss a lot of the finer points. Sure, say use Keil, but they should have already used an assembler at some point. People using schematic/layout software can easily use ORCAD and notice that a lot of time is saved, but in the end they did not use the product as intended. Eventually, key concepts will be found to be lacking and they should have tried an inferior software like EAGLE. Sure, use solid edge and find nice FEM analysis and 3d movement. They should be able to draft by hand and view their objects in 2-d on paper. Eventually, I can go on to say, let me go out and buy 10 engineers and they can do the work for me. I would be saving massive amounts of time, but I would not be learning a whole lot. So, I would recommend that if you have knowledge of an inferior passage, then you may move up to a more practical passage just like one would build a small business into a large business.

Edit: Another view is that how do you know which software to start out with or to upgrade. I know a lot of you on here use EAGLE, but you could save time by investing a couple k into a higher end software package. The same idea applies. Generally, you want to work your way up by using free to inexpensive tools to more expensive tools so that you have a knowledge as to which product to buy.