I use Sinergistic's little edit to PTTGV5
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30780.0It was very careful not to go doing things like making that one tile that's also part of raised bridges look like a tree but the particular thing that would useful for newcomers would be how the < > symbols are angled up or down.
-
I was picturing something more like in game tutorials. You could either dig out little spaces then abandon and reclaim or edit the raws to make no sleep/eat/drink dwarves to carve out rooms. Saving every so often then copying the save would let you have several snapshots to mess around with.
Then in each of them edit dwarf speed to 0 so they will haul really quick and get them to fill up some stockpiles with whatever is relevant to the tutorial. If you set up a bridge with a lever in the very first save you could just have the full list of crap sit in the wagon and then later atomsmash whatever wasn't for that tutorial.
With this sort of thing you could walk them through digging out some bedrooms and that sort of thing but they could also jump around to look at what you had to say about setting up a hospital without having had to first follow through the advice on pigtail growing or whatnot because you were "efficient" with your embark points.
Oh well, I guess if I have such a clear idea of how to do it I should just do this myself.