Phil King of Weekend Engineering returned to give Elecia advice on how to fabricate a board, both in a professional capacity and for garage projects. 

EaglePCB is a commercial package which is also available as a free, noncommercial version for small 2-layer boards. Other open source packages mentioned include Kicad and gEDA. Some board fabricators provide free tools that work only with their fab houses (such asExpressPCB).  Digikey's SchemeIt  provides a way to get a PDF schematic (and a BOM), but falls down by not providing a way to generate a net list, a critical part of board fabrication.

PCB West is this week at the Santa Clara convention center.

How Printed Circuit Boards are Designed (1960 Edition)

 

Hildy  Licht electronic assembly and manufacturing