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[BlackOctoberFox]

I don't know if there is something already like this in-game, and there very well may be a third-party mod that allows you to do this, but could you implement a way to create blueprints?

I love the base customization aspect of this game and before hand I always make a basic layout in a word processor, showing what I want and on what floor of my base, but it can be a pain to constantly switch windows to check and it's easy (for me) to forget where I wanted things to go, say for instance I've dug out a 5x5 room. I could have intended that for anything. But I've forgotten after fighting off a goblin raiding party, followed by the dwarves' party party.

So here's the idea. It requires a Dwarf to have the Building Design skill, and to be assigned under the nobles menu as "Grand Architect."

The Grand Architect's office will convert all tables inside into a Design Workbench. The Grand Architect can then be assigned to Plan Buildings on the work bench. He'll take stone blocks or leather to write/draw on and provided he has some you can designate a Zone as a Building site limited by the number of resources the Architect has (Because you can't get any detail trying to carve a fortress over 500 tiles wide on a single tile of stone). This would capture all known information about the zone, going down as many Z-Levels have been accesed inside. Then from the Design Workbench q menu, it is possible to design buildings. By selecting a zone from the list in brought up, the game will pause and load a still of that zone, sans creatures, dwarves etc. Where you can place buildings, mine out and otherwise plan out your base. Finally the starting and finished stills will be compared and the game will tell you the materials required for the conversion. Much like the bookkeeper how precise it is depends on the quality of his/her office. Green means you meet the goal, red means you don't. Then you can keep referencing the plan without the need of another window, or switching between the world your in and the base you've designed in say the object testing arena? What d'you think, I think it's a nice convenient way of planning things out.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Not sure really that anything like this would be required. What I do is to sort of mark out entire floors and all the rooms but leave the corridor leading to it unmarked so I can make sure it's the way I want it before I dig it out. You can also use the note system to mark what rooms are meant for if you tend to lose track of what you had planned. In my opinion this is one of those things that are better left to the player to manage on their own. (not to say that the ui couldn't be improved to make things easier ofc, but the basis of what's needed is all there)

[Dwarf Kitty]

There's Quickfort:
 
http://www.joelpt.net/quickfort/
 
If you have access to any sort of spreadsheet program, you can make your own blueprints, with support for flipping and rotating base prints, and repeating prints.  There's also support for saving multiple sheets under one .xls or .xls file.  It's all done with Alt hotkeys.
 
So, you can designate a dig site, wait for the miners to finish, then call up the build phase for the same site, wait for the builders to finish, then set tasks with query.  You could use the prints to give you visual cues as to what dig site is for what, and file names to remind you what you are working on.  (Last file accessed remains available until you close QF or choose something else.)
 
One annoyance for me, though is that, since I run the game fullscreen, calling up prints minimizes the game so that QF can give the confirmation screen.  But that's probably a darn sight better than having to switch to your notes all the time.   

[Rogue Yun]

I like to build a trap lined tower thirty z levels high and watch siegers fall to their doom trying to evade weapon traps of a couple wooden swords. I would absolutely LOVE a way to designate a building plan for multiple levels instead of having to wait for each level to be built before I could build the next. Quickfort is amazing and makes this task easier, but still tedious as you still have to wait for each level to complete itself before you can start the next. I would help if I could.. but I'm a sucky programmer

[King Mir]

I just want to has suspended designations. That's enough for my planning needs.

[Rogue Yun]

I just want to has suspended designations. That's enough for my planning needs.

This plugin is pretty cool and might do what you want.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121858.0