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[Sowelu]

I like to use channels a lot, and they're a real pain to dig out.  Like, if you're digging a massive moat around your fortress that goes 25 levels down (to fill with lava, of course), you end up doing something like this every level:

X........_  _......X

and having to designate the inner-most two squares to channel, repeat for the next level.  This is a huge pain, to put it lightly.  Too much micromanagement.  It's most annoying when your moat is not very wide compared to its length.

I found a better way!  Maybe this won't help anyone, maybe this is intuitively obvious, or maybe it's been posted before...  But here's a faster method:

- First, designate the ENTIRE area to be channeled as up/down stairs.
- Next, designate one whole level at a time for channeling, starting from the top level and going down.  Just designate for channeling over top of the up/down stairs.  When a whole level is done being channeled, move to the next one down.  Your dwarves will mine each level from below, and won't even trip over each other!

This method really needs access to the bottom floor, or possibly leaving a corner of up/down stairs intact until the very end, or a separate access column.  But it takes WAY less micromanagement!  It doesn't even take any more dwarf time than the "first mine, then channel" that I was doing before, and in fact requires a ton less dwarf walking.

Man this would have saved me a full day out of my life if I thought of this sooner.  I want to put it on the wiki but I don't know where it would go.

[Grumman]

I do the same thing for my moats, but with ramps.

[Footkerchief]

This is where it goes => http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Channel

It definitely belongs on there.  Channeling can be difficult even for experienced players.

[Ivefan]

Ramps is not as effective and can occasionally cause collapses.
Just remember to use Upstairs rather than up/down as the bottom layer if you do not want the layer below to be visible or dont want all them downstairs instead of floors.