Hey there. Recently I completed 90% of what I planned to do to create a project/prototyping box for the arduino. It's sort of an implementation of the concept of the firmata, but in a physical form. I have 14 columns of digital i/o wired to switches and/or LEDs and/or external input/output, and 6 columns of analog i/o. 3 are wired to radial potentiometers, and 3 are wired to sliders. All analog pins also have the capability to connect to external circuits via 3 pin headers. Come check it out. 
http://3rl.us/apbard
Drool... 
That is some excellent work. I have actually been learning how to use sketchup for the last couple of months, so it was interesting to see how you did the design in sketchup. I have yet to play with Illustrator, and I am wondering what advantages were there to taking the drawing into Illustrator?
This is a very inspiring project. Kudos.
The reason for using illustrator was some pre-planning to take the vector artwork to a laser cutter, which is the format that it requires. Sketchup isn't really intended to be a precise 2D cad program when it comes to rendering files out to 2d models, so I was basically using the tools that I knew I would ultimately need to produce artwork with in order to get to the end result i was planning for. Sketchup is incredibly powerful and I wouldn't give it up for anything, but combined with illustrator, oof. it's just that much more powerful.