The Control Panel Building Process (Software)???

[lettuce]

Well its been about 2 and a half years since i made my last cab, and was woundering what program people are using now to design their layout for their new CP right through to designing the art work for their CP, is there now a single program where you can create the CP layout and then the artwork to overlay onto said layout?

[RoninEditor]

Upon someone's recommendation, I used Google Sketchup:

http://www.google.com/sketchup/downloads/

It's great to get the overall feel.  I had NO idea how to use a CAD program but the tutorials really help and it saved me days of trial and error.  I will caution, though, that you'll find yourself tweaking too much in this when, after a while, you just have to start cutting the wood.

For my CP and Marquee art, I just used Photoshop, 300dpi.  I saved it as a flattened Photoshop file which is a fraction of the size of a Targa or other high end, no compression file... plus, it's the original format and Mamemarquees and Emdkay read them both.  I used both guys for my CP and Marquee, respectively, and I really dug their work.

[lettuce]

There was a program i used where you actualy selected all different types of stick and buttons from a drop down menu and then placed them onto a CP canvas, but cant remember for the life of me what this program was called. It help massively as it would tell you the position (co-ordinates) of each stick/button you placed, so helped when cutting out the CP aswell

[headkaze]

There was a program i used where you actualy selected all different types of stick and buttons from a drop down menu and then placed them onto a CP canvas, but cant remember for the life of me what this program was called. It help massively as it would tell you the position (co-ordinates) of each stick/button you placed, so helped when cutting out the CP aswell

Do you mean MameRoom's Control Panel Design software?

[Blanka]

For the layout and overlay design, better pick Freehand or Illustrator. Those are good for vector-print work and perfect for 1:1 CPO measurement layout.
Sketchup is more suited for 3D cabinet design, not for 2D work and definitely not for CP art.

[Turnarcades]

For basic layouts, you could use the layout designer in the Ultimarc i-pac utility. It'll give you a good idea of colour options and snaps it all to a grid. Just gives you an idea of overall looks and colour schemes, then you can use 'print screen' and paste the jpg of the file into photoshop etc for further editing.