An investigation of the vacuum Einstein gravitational field equations for cylindrically and axially symmetric space-times is presented which leads to an equivalent differential system involving a simple nonlinearity only. The case when this equivalent system is linear is analyzed in detail and two methods for generating solutions of the Einstein vacuum equations are set up. As a result, in the axially symmetric case the linearity of the equivalent system characterizes completely the Kramer-Neugebauer transforms of Papapetrou line elements. Accordingly, Weyl solutions are shown to generate exhaustively both Lewis and van Stockum solutions. Analogous results are obtained also in the cylindrically symmetric case.