CP design software?

[Crayola]

What are folks using to layout their control panels?

I am planning on building a simple jamma test rig
and I'd like to cut the CP out of metal on my CNC plasma.

Is there any dedicated software for this or are people
just using a CAD program? I wanted to make sure I get the
hole sizes and spacing correct.

Thanks Mike

[Blanka]

Sketchup is great for a quick try, but not suitable for CNC as circles are polygons. Autocad like software is best for making good CNC files. Maybe the cheap chinese clone of Autocad has a trial (ZDCad). Another possibility is CorelDraw. I guess it has good DXF export, and it is better suited for to-scale drawing then Illustrator (and cheaper).

[Nephasth]

I used Visio. My company offers discounted software from MS, so it only cost me 9.99. I was able to save my CP file as a .dxf in Visio and the laser cut it out exactly as I had it in Visio off of a usb drive. All the other guy had to do was put the metal on the table, load the .dxf, run the program, and take the metal off the table.

[HotDogg]

I've used Qcad as a low cost CAD solution.  Having no experience with this type of software I found the tutorials & manual very effective and I was progressing my design in no time.  I'd say the big downside is that you are constrained to 2d.

Since measurements of most components are available online it was pretty easy to replicate the footprint of a button, trackball, etc.

[Crayola]

Okay so.. all good sugggestions.

Now where are you finding the dimensions for buttons, switches, trackballs,
joysticks, etc?

[Blanka]

Both the shops I buy from have detailed info about the items they sell:
www.arcadeshop.de
www.ultimarc.com

[nox771]

Sketchup is great for a quick try, but not suitable for CNC as circles are polygons.

I've heard this before, but Sketchup can have a user definable number of sides for a circle.  A 100-sided round polygon at the dimensions of a button hole should route out as pretty much a circle.  Granted it does require more careful attention to circular things, but it should be usable.  (just for fun - 2*pi*(1.125in/2) = 3.53in circumference / 100 = 0.03534in per side = 0.9mm per side, I don't know if I could see the faceted sides at that resolution)

[SammyWI]

Draftsight is another free cad program.  Not bad when I tried it.  Tries to be most like Autocad.  It's from the people that make Solidworks - I think they are trying their best to kill Autocad.

[HotDogg]

Okay so.. all good sugggestions.

Now where are you finding the dimensions for buttons, switches, trackballs,
joysticks, etc?

In no particular order:
slagcoin.com
happcontrols - seems to have diagrams with measurements for a number of items
forum search
measured some myself if I couldn't find elsewhere

[Crayola]

Thanks for ther advice all.. I found Rhino 3D.. EXCELLENT program.
Perfect for designing a control panel. And they have a fully functional Trial.

So here's my jamma test bench.. now off to the CNC to cut it.