PCB DESIGN.

Use Kicad. Find it here:

Ian

Hmmm .... "easy method" is highly subjective. For small designs, most of the demo or student versions of commercial products will do the job

- they support most Microsoft systems well. Or consider

eagle which is supported by many shops as well.

My personal preference, which has been working well for many years now, is PCB (

) which has a fairly large library of parts and it's gerber output will work for most pcb fabrication shops. The current GTK version has some gross slowness, so compile for lesstif or use the older 050315 version under Xaw which is fully featured, fast and stable.

you might want to explore using tools from gEDA which includes PCB. I've helped some others install gEDA to their linux systems from steve's iso:

this article describes PCB on linux and homebrew boards:

I'd suggest using a commercial board house for double sided and multilayer designs, as they will plate thru the holes and provide solder mask for not much more. I have several favorties for simple boards, for double sided you will find the guys at:

easy to deal with, and they will allow you to place several designs on a single panel without additional charge ... most other shops restrict you to one design, one board, which can triple your costs for several projects all at once ... or prevent a homebrew club or roommates from sharing the setup charges for a minimum run.

if you want to make simple single or double sided boards at home for fun, and you have a laser printer available, the blue film transfers work well: