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[Eater of Vermin]

Having finally overcome some FPS issues, now my latest fort has begun to suffer from task travel times as it is spread over some 200 z-levels.

If I place a dorm near their current work site, will weary deep-downer dorfs use a convenient spare bed there instead of making the long haul uphill to where they'd earlier taken possession of an unassigned bedroom?  (The wiki doesn't really say Yea or Nay, although I get a strong inference that a dwarf will only sleep in an assigned bedroom once provided one.)

There will be rooms built & assigned closer to the final forge site eventually, but in the storyline I'm guiding this fort along the forges, etc. are simply placed in convenient exploratory tunnels while my dorfs search for the ideal deep-down site.  A temp dorm would fit into my grand scheme; there's already a temporary cantina after all. 

Individual rooms?  Nar.  Not yet.

 

[mikekchar]

Dwarfs will use any unassigned beds (even hospital ones), even if they have an assigned bed somewhere else.  However, *when* they do so defies any logic that I've been able to see.  Generally, dwarfs will use their assigned bed, but will occasionally use an unassigned bed.  Which one they use seems to be random (i.e. not necessarily related to distance).  However, if a dwarf does not have an assigned bed, they tend to use beds that are closer to where they are.

[PatrikLundell]

As mikekchar indicated, you ought to get them to use the downstairs dorms more often by deassigning them from their bedrooms (but in that case you can't let the bedrooms be free for the taking, as they'd be reclaimed). So either remove the bedrooms (as bedrooms) or assign them to someone else (you should be able to assign all of them to an "overseer" [the bookkeeper?] if you don't have enough topside dorfs to assign them to, for instance).

[anewaname]

It might help to make "deep-downer" dorm rooms with enough beds for 10-20% of your population cap. A dwarf will "claim" a bed long before he gets to it, and if you only have 4 beds in the dorm, there will be times when they have been claimed by dwarfs that are still walking.

Some of the reason for dwarfs choosing unassigned beds or owned beds might partly be related to personalities. Needy dwarfs might say "I want the comfort of my own bed", practical dwarfs might say "it is a long way back, this bed will do", and work-o-holic dwarfs will say "my workshop floor is flat".

[TV4Fun]

Instead of having a dorm, you could manually assign beds in different spaces to your dwarves who you expect to work in those spaces. There's nothing that says that a dwarf can't have more than one bed.

[Grim Portent]

Instead of having a dorm, you could manually assign beds in different spaces to your dwarves who you expect to work in those spaces. There's nothing that says that a dwarf can't have more than one bed.

The pathing decisions for that are still a bit wonky aren't they? Or have dwarfs stopped ignoring z levels when deciding distance?

I'd suggest just moving their bedrooms to the area they're working in. Beds are quick to haul and can be shoved into any old corner of mine shafts or into apartments carved near workshops. Doesn't satisfy the dwarfs as much as a proper smoothed/engraved bedchamber, but it's much quicker to just cram beds into useful areas and make the miners sleep in and around the shafts they dig and blacksmiths sleep in/near the forges.

[PatrikLundell]

I believe DF determines distances as the dorf digs, and that pathing is done only for the "winning" alternative. I'm not clear over what reference point DF uses with two targets, though (e.g. a plump helmet and a table at which to eat it), but I suspect both are selected when the job is taken using the starting point as the reference for both (rather than first locating the plump helmet and then the free table closest to that food item).
I think there were some 2D distance issues a fair while ago, though.