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[anonydwarf]

I am encountering situations where when I try to construct a wall, I am getting the 'no access to building material non-economic item' error message.  This is happening in a situation where I can build directly adjacent to the space in question, so I know my dwarves have access and materials at the ready.  There are no burrow restrictions in effect.  I am starting to think that my save is corrupted or that I have hit on a bug (sometimes in these same places, I can build but it shows the distance to the nearest material as '-9999999').

Any ideas on why this may be and what may have caused it?

I am in the middle of a mega project (12 level above ground fort, made from cast obsidian natch).  The wall in question is for the form for the magma so I can continue casting.  I am loathe to give up on this save.

[Snaake]

Well, that error most often occurs for me if I've accidentally removed a connection between z-levels, and try to build on a z-level without a valid path to materials. I haven't heard of it being bugged in any way, there probably is some access issue that you're just not seeing. Maybe post a screenshot of the location?

edit: the classic case would be designating square walls without taking care that the dwarves build the corners first. This often results in the corners not being reachable. But you shouldn't get that error message in such a case, instead it would be "cannot reach construction site: no access" or something to that effect.

[Merendel]

I'm asuming your getting that message on the build screen when trying to designate the wall to be built?   If I were you I'd double check that the dwarves really can get up there, try a military order or some other means of forcing a dwarf to go up where your trying to build.   If that fails try looking around for whats breaking pathing, aka lockd door, raised bridge, missing stairs or whatever.  If the dwarves can get up there try puting a stone/block stockpile(whatever your building with) right next to where you want to build and order it to take from your main stockpile.  Once building materials are there try agian.  If its still failing after all that I've got no clue what could be wrong short of being able to DL the save and try to troubleshoot.

[anonydwarf]

I am 100% sure there is access - the place we're talking about is literally on a flat rooftop, and I can build on squares directly adjacent to the ones in question.  It is indeed happening when I designate the construction.

One thing that may or may not have resolved this is that I did have temperature disabled via the Lazy Newb Pack launcher (to speed up the FPS during all this obsidian casting).  Turning it back on seems to have partially resolved it.  I was able to finish casting the level I was on, and I'm setting up now to see if this happens again on the next level up.

Why this would cause the problem I'm having is beyond me though...

[Garath]

I remember a post about this before, it's a known issue, but I forgot what it actually was or how it was caused, and a quick search of the forums didn't help me any further. Maybe it's documented on mantis. Good luck

[Merendel]

Tempature might have been the cause depending on how your doing things.  As I recall with tempature off if an area had magma in it at one point the dwarves will still think the area is unsafe due to heat even after the magma is removed, they wont path through the unsafe area and so there will be no access to anything on the other side.   I'm asumeing your useing a magma pump stack to get lava up top and it was hiting your FPS so you turned off temp?   you can help the FPS some by haveing a larger resovoir on each level of the pumpstack.  Instead of a 1x1 where lava pools till the pump above snatches it up make a 1x3,  extra lava will sit in the extra 2 squares and keep the area heated instead of having all the blocks toggeling between hot and cold every time the pumps move a glob of magma.  there are threads and I think a wiki artical or two where some clever folks did the !!Science!! for optomizing pumpstacks.

[WhimsyWink]

The most recent example that I saw in forums was that the material selected was on the wrong side of the construction.  ie not yet pathable.  Have you tried selecting other material?

[itg]

I am 100% sure there is access - the place we're talking about is literally on a flat rooftop, and I can build on squares directly adjacent to the ones in question.  It is indeed happening when I designate the construction.

One thing that may or may not have resolved this is that I did have temperature disabled via the Lazy Newb Pack launcher (to speed up the FPS during all this obsidian casting).  Turning it back on seems to have partially resolved it.  I was able to finish casting the level I was on, and I'm setting up now to see if this happens again on the next level up.

Why this would cause the problem I'm having is beyond me though...

If you're casting obsidian with temperature off, the new obsidian is created at 12000 U (the temperature of magma) and it can't cool off. Dwarves won't path through hot terrain, even if temperature is off and it won't actually hurt them. That's why it causes the problems you've been having.