The self-organizing beta-peptides have attracted considerable interest in the fields of foldamer chemistry and biochemistry. These compounds exhibit various stable secondary structure motifs that can be exploited to construct biologically active substances and nanostructured tertiary structures. The secondary structures can be controlled via the beta-amino acid sequence, and cyclic beta-amino acid residues play a crucial role in the design. The most important procedures for the preparation of cyclic beta-amino acid monomers and peptides are discussed in this tutorial review. Besides the secondary structure design principles, the methods of folded structure detection are surveyed.