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Step 1
Verify that you need to build a PCB. It's tempting to jump from wire wrap or breadboard into the PCB because your circuit looks, feels, and acts more like a finished product. However, there is an investment of time, money, and effort to do so. If your circuit works 'as is', you can accomplish a lot by re-wrapping or tidying up your breadboard with color coded wires and efficient placement of components.
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Step 2
Understand how schematic and layout software work. You design the circuit in a schematic tool, much like you would draw it out on paper. The symbols are unimportant other than for your understanding, but the pad to pad connections are important. You'll need to learn the concept of a footprint, where you identify the pads of a component and how they will land on the PCB. Footprints are usually found in the last pages of a component's data sheet, and many components have multiple footprints you can choose from when ordering.
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Step 3
Walk through an online tutorial of any company's tools. Cadence Orcad is a good example. Another is a small PCB house called Sunstone Circuits with their PCB123 software. Eagle software is another good example.
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Step 4
Find schematic and layout software. It's best to find both schematic and layout from the same company so that their integration is seamless. You need only the basics. Companies will offer tools and functions that you probably don't need, such as back annotation, where changes you make in the layout program get made automatically in your schematic, or simulation abilities that are complex. Autorouter, which attempts to automatically make the pad to pad PCB traces for you, is another feature that is tricky to use since this is as much art as science, and some companies charge extra for this. Eagle has freeware with constraints on board size, and their lowest cost purchase packages of Eagle Light costs less than $50. Sunstone Circuit's PCB123 package is free, but it can only be used with their PCB manufacturing unless you purchase a Gerber file from them for about $100-$150. A Gerber file is a standard output of a layout tool that allows PCB construction.
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Step 5
Source components and build or verify footprints. Most PCB packages have a library of footprints that match components you can buy. They sometimes work and sometimes don't. The only way to be sure is to have a component in hand and print out a scale rendering of the footprint to see if they match. If so, great. If not, no big deal. You can create a custom footprint to match your components. Also note that you can usually get a few free 'sample' components from most distributors like Digikey or Mouser or even the manufacturer like Texas Instruments or Maxim.
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Step 6
Assess your soldering abilities. You can buy top end soldering stations for several hundred dollars and learn how to handle the finest pitch (smallest size pads) components. But it's an art. If you have a Radio Shack soldering iron, you're best to get your components in the largest packaging you can find. Through hole components are bad for mass production and board space economy, but they are great for building a PCB by hand to see it work.
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Step 7
Look online for a PCB house that is willing to use their spare capacity to build a PCB for cheap. Most local shops want hundreds of dollars to do anything for you, but Internet-savvy PCB shops can make use of a national audience and spare capacity to squeeze your order in between their larger customers. Sunstone Circuits has done good work for me, and they launched a program in 2009 for making PCBs for under $50 without solder mask (you won't need solder mask if you keep your PCB clean and it never leaves your lab) and silkscreen (for labeling things on your board - need solder mask to use it, not necessary if you keep track of what goes where). Competitors like Pad2Pad are entering the market as well and are worth a look.
