Hi Marty,

The L-Edit installation CD ships with PDF documentation that I found to
be pretty good. They do not include a tutorial, per se, but are clear
and simple in their conventional documentation. The docs can be accessed
directly from within L-Edit, but you must have Adobe's Acrobat Reader
installed.

We use L-Edit here at Dartmouth, and have been very pleased with it. An
"old-school" (and free!) alternative is Magic, but its learning curve is
steeper than L-Edit's. We have also used CoventorWare on a trial basis.
Coventor includes a very powerful (and expensive!) modeling and analysis
package, but their layout editor (i.e. the mask design component) still
feels like beta software. It ships with a series of very thorough
tutorials.

Cadence is the VLSI industry standard for mask design, but I can't say I
have tried it personally. I also understand that it is very expensive.

I share with you a certain frustration with the tools available for MEMS
mask design, but I think that the situation is rapidly improving. (I am
particularly impressed with CoventorWare's progress in this direction.)
Most of these tools were originally developed for VLSI, not MEMS, and so
I think this explains why some of the "obvious" features have not yet
been included.

Good luck with your selection!

-Craig McGray
 Dartmouth College