[markwu2001]

PCB Design is a broad "field." Depends on what you're building. I think people place too much of an emphasis on the tool you use instead of the skillsets you need. At the end of the day, in 99% of cases, we're integrating highly complex, yet modular systems built by semiconductor companies.

Expand your design capabilities by understanding these semiconductor black boxes that are available to you in your field (power electronics, audio, RF, etc.) As another user mentioned, read up on design references! And datasheet graphs, and try to get your hands on closely related previous designs. As EEs, we should talk more about design patterns and primitives like software engineers see it.

But of course, I understand why there's a big discussion about tooling, it's like picking the first language to start programming in. Imo, if you're starting out in PCB design, pick a tool that doesn't get in the way with your learning; something simple but also capable when you progress. The software engineering choice would be python, and I think flux.ai is the closest thing we get to that. But still, if you learn one, you can use the rest! We're all constrained by a pretty standardized manufacturing process so the functions you perform in all these tools will be very similar.