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[94dima94]

My fortress is partially built digging out sand. I'm trying to dig out a sand wall of my dining room, and build a stone wall instead; my builders have completed the job, except for one point, where the wall isn't built yet. Whenever I tell anybody to build it, a random, non-builder dwarf (or sometimes two dwarves) goes and stands exactly where I'm trying to build the wall, causing the builders to suspend the job; once the job is stopped, the dwarf walks away. Why is this happening?

[RenoFox]

It's a bug. The builder stops construction because there's a creature blocking the site, even when the creature is himself. Undesignate and redesignate the wall, and the dwarves ought to get it done properly.

[Mr S]

I do believe he means that one of the mooks hanging out in the dining room keeps happening into the area, blocking the builder.

Possible solutions:
Reduce the size of the dining hall to NOT cover tiles adjacent to construction site.

Temporarily move dining hall designation all together

Atom smash the offenders until they get the hint!!

[94dima94]

I already tried to redesignate the wall, and the site is outside the room, but it doesn't work. The dwarf occuping the zone is not a builder, by the way.

[Larix]

Just to avoid confusion - you're not merely toggling the 's'uspended flag off, you really hit 'x' to cancel the building and completely designate anew via 'b'uild 'C'onstruction 'W'all, right? A building suspended because of builders blocking the site will never get finished if it's just un-suspended, the builders never acquire a new 'build from' location.

If they can't build a newly-designated wall, it's usually a problem with the building layout itself - a place where it's hard or impossible to build legitimately; this particularly often happens near ramps. E.g. if you have such a design:
. x
/#  Ramp with adjacent wall on the lower level

, you can't really build a wall in spot x, because it'd block the usable direction of the ramp; but the dwarfs won't tell you 'erm, chief, that's kind of an impossible place to make a building', they walk on top of the supporting wall, try to build a new wall on top of their boots and then complain that a 'creature' is getting in the way of their building attempts.

[94dima94]

I cancel the wall and redesignate it. The wall is in an accessible point, without ramps around.

[vanatteveldt]

What happens if you undesignate the dining hall as a meeting hall and create a new dining hall somewhere else?

If all else fails you can lock everyone up by making a burrows, setting it to civ alert, drafting a mason, ordering him outside the burrow, and locking the burrow door. But that's a bit of a hack.

[94dima94]

I'll use the burrow method, although I don't like to stop every dwarf in the fortress because of a wall...

[Hetairos]

Try forcing the dwarves to construct the wall from a different side, by blocking the access from the one they usually use.

[krenshala]

Have you tried just unsuspending the job?  Even if it keeps getting blocked the job usually gets a tick or two of work completed every time the worker tries to complete it.   Its annoying, and requires even more micromanaging than normal, but you should be able to just unsuspend until it completes if it isn't one of the builder stands in the wrong place bugs causing this.