Best way to put existing CP in software?

[gdilly]

I'm in the process of developing a control panel overlay and I will obviously have to draw up the existing panel in photoshop or some other tool in order to hand it over to be printed.

What's the best way to get the hole positions for buttons/joysticks for an existing control panel into software to have them in the exact correct positions so when the overlay is printed and applied it will be perfect?  Sorry if this questions isn't clear.

Here's the control panel that I'm working on...

[javeryh]

I don't know how to use photoshop or anything but once you have your overlay you should use it to drill the holes in your CP.  Lining up art for existing holes is almost impossible.

[NickG]

A well equipped copy center may be able to scan a paper tracing of your panel or even the panel itself, so that you have the digital image of the layout to work with.  Barring that, you could trace it on some graph paper and do some A4 scans, realigning them to each other within your editor.  For that method, You could try something like this to make it easier to align:
http://edushop.edu4kids.com/product_info.php?s=ghop&products_id=7107.  Another thought is to trace the holes and edges onto a transparent material (cellophane wrapping paper, or the like), adhere the material to a large format display such as an HDTV and work from there.  For any of this you must be very careful to maintain scale for the final print.

[Sir Headless VII]

You could try taking off all the buttons and joysticks and suck and tracing it onto a large sheet of paper through the holes. wrapping paper seems like a poor quality but easy to find option.Its still going to be virtually impossible to replicate it in software and on an overlay (although you could scan it i guess). It seems like the easiest things would be to just remake the top of the cp to match the overlay you design.