Cockpit Layout
Things to consider when laying out a cockpit:
Hierarchy of importance - NASA studies have a list. Must find it.
Using Orbiter vessel panels as starting points
Mock it up
Once you have drawings, its time to build a mockup.
If you have reduced line drawings, commonly found in books on historical spacecraft, you can scan those drawings into an imaging program and expand the scale until a known dimension matches a scaled printout of the drawing. As an example, given a line drawing of the front panel of the Space Shuttle, you can find on the web that the original CRT displays were 5"x7" and expand your drawing until a print is that dimension. you then have the ratio to convert any dimension on the drawing to full-scale (or less if space is an issue.) Normally you would want a full-scale cockpit(i.e. 100% of the true size), but if space is an issue, anything down to 85% scaling is an adequate substitute and is used by some aircraft flight simulators. Note that using this technique there is a margin of error that increases the smaller the known dimension, so try to find the largest known dimension possible.
Having the life-size dimensions, either your own or scaled from drawings, you can then cut replicas out of cardboard or foam board to get a feel for what you're building and let you adjust positions of things until its the way you want. At this point you can begin adding your controls to portions of your mockup. Normally you would work with individual panels printed to letter-size paper. If you have access to a copy shop or someone with wide format printing capability it is possible to print, for example, an entire full-scale forward panel at one time. It is generally more cost-effective, though, to print the sections individually.
By printing individual sets of controls, you can customize your cockpit quite effectively. As an example, You could build a cockpit for one of the Orbiter spacecraft (DG, Dragonfly or Shuttles) and position a Space Shuttle Electrical or Life Support panel in a likely position.
CAD tools:
Cockpit Layout/Display and Control References
EVALUATION OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE COCKPIT AVIONICS UPGRADE (CAU) DISPLAYS
Automating Vehicle Operations in Next-Generation Spacecraft: Human Factors Issues