Hi Tim.  There's nothing to it most of the time.  If you're using
Visual Studio .NET, just add a reference to your project.  In the "Add
Reference..." dialog, click on the COM tab, and pick your COM object
from the list.  You can also browse to a type lib.  You should then
see a reference to your COM component as if it were a .NET namespace.
If all goes well, you can then pretend that it's a .NET assembly
instead of a COM component.  That works 95% of the time.  If that
doesn't work the problems usually aren't too hard to fix.

The best option if you are dealing with a third party is to ask them
for a "primary interop assembly", which is a .NET wrapper that is
supposed to be created by the author of the component.  If you have a
PIA you are pretty much guaranteed to not have integration problems.

You can read up on this stuff in just about any book about Windows
Forms.  There are undoubtedly plenty of examples on MSDN and more on
the web.

- Rob