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[peridot]

I apologize if this is an obvious question, but: what is the least painful way to dig out large 3D volumes?

For cisterns and magma reservoirs I usually just designate the whole thing as up/down stairs, which I leave in place. The miners can dig that out in any order, no cave-ins, no deaths by dehydration. Hooray! But it leaves the place full of stairs, which is not always what I want.

For my glass-roofed sunroom/statue garden, I channelled out one layer at a time, from the top. Worked fine, and I could designate a whole floor at a time, at least, but I had to start from the top and provide access to every level.

For my obsidian casting room/visitors' lobby, I dug all the floors out and then channelled each layer, but this required channelling a line at a time to avoid cave-ins, and synchronizing the layers so as not to drop junk stone on the heads of miners below.

I tried channelling upward ramps but I kept getting cave-ins - never on top of a dwarf, but they got thrown around pretty badly. The layer above had been dug out, but it still had its floors, so I think it was those floors, somehow falling. This was definitely the problem when there were trees growing above that I couldn't just channel out (woodcutters being slow for some reason, with the fort standing open).

For horizontal water plumbing I designate up stairs to prevent tree growth. Ugly when empty but way less pain than paving the floors. And I can remind myself where to put valves by removing the stairs. Unfortunately I ran into a weird problem where I dug one set of up stairs under another and the water broke through. I thought they were supposed to leave the floors intact? Maybe I had mis-designated the above tile?

For a clean vertical shaft with no stairs or anything, I end up having to run a parallel shaft with stairs, channel each floor, and then wall it back off. I guess there's a do-or-die approach of just channelling straight down and hoping the miner reaches the bottom before getting too thirsty to work, but is there a better option? Can up-down stairs be safely removed (bottom-to-top perhaps) with no side access?

[blue sam3]

If you want to remove a whole area at once, you can use the sky-support method, see this thread.

[Raphite1]

You can designate ramps to remove an entire layer. There will be no cave-ins, unless a tree happens to be growing on top.

This can be used to dig a straight-sided shaft, but your miners will need to dig a way out at the bottom.

[peridot]

You can designate ramps to remove an entire layer. There will be no cave-ins, unless a tree happens to be growing on top.

This can be used to dig a straight-sided shaft, but your miners will need to dig a way out at the bottom.

Are you sure? I did get cave-ins with no trees when I was using ramps to dig out my obsidian caster. And how does it work for smooth-sided shafts? Do they start from the top and remain trapped until they hit bottom? You can do that with channeling, I know.

[TruePikachu]

D-H
(Diggy Hole)
(actually Designate-cHannel)

[jcochran]

Hmm.... For a large multi-floor volume to dig out, how about simply digging each room. Then build a support below the topmost floor (2nd level down from top of volume to be cleared). Channel out the perimeter of the top floor. Link a lever to the support, and finally toggle the lever after all the dwarves are well distanced from the volume. That ought to cause the top floor to cave in, and then break through all the lower floors.

[wierd]

D-H
(Diggy Hole)
(actually Designate-cHannel)

Sadly, only works 1 zlevel at a time.  Designating a mass block of material that will will result in "Dumbassedness".

You know, where Urist decides to channel in a non-orderly fashion in both X, Y and Z directions, resulting in a huge chunk of the material losing support, and squashing Ducim into pink paste?

Yeah. That.

D, H, only works if you want to stand around waiting for Ducim and Urist to mine out each Z level before designating the next.

[peridot]

Hmm.... For a large multi-floor volume to dig out, how about simply digging each room. Then build a support below the topmost floor (2nd level down from top of volume to be cleared). Channel out the perimeter of the top floor. Link a lever to the support, and finally toggle the lever after all the dwarves are well distanced from the volume. That ought to cause the top floor to cave in, and then break through all the lower floors.

This sounds alarmingly effective. I had forgotten about supports and levers. But doesn't it require your top floor to be one step larger on each side than all the others? Or else you'd have to carve out the edges of all the other layers, one painful square at a time. Or do cave-ins knock out floors adjacent to the ones hit by the layer above?

[Girlinhat]

Cave-ins are the best method if you have a very well-defined area to clear.  First, do regular mining (leave the floor) on all layers you wish to have open.  Put stairs in the middle, up and down the whole length, excluding the top-most, then channel to remove the edge floor, leaving a series of plates supported by a stair column.  Add a support mechanism, remove the lowermost stairs, so that it's now resting on the support.  Clear out, and collapse it.

Why this is great:
You can designate everything to be mined at once, and let the dwarves get to work.
You can collect all the materials if you're after stone/ore.
Cave-ins!

Why this is bad:
You have to know a little about mechanisms.
Cave-ins are dangerous business!

[peridot]

Cave-ins are the best method if you have a very well-defined area to clear.  First, do regular mining (leave the floor) on all layers you wish to have open.  Put stairs in the middle, up and down the whole length, excluding the top-most, then channel to remove the edge floor, leaving a series of plates supported by a stair column.  Add a support mechanism, remove the lowermost stairs, so that it's now resting on the support.  Clear out, and collapse it.

Why this is great:
You can designate everything to be mined at once, and let the dwarves get to work.
You can collect all the materials if you're after stone/ore.
Cave-ins!

Why this is bad:
You have to know a little about mechanisms.
Cave-ins are dangerous business!

Excellent. Now I have to try this! Thanks!

Edited to add: Isn't there some risk of dwarves standing under the channeled-out edge bits getting hit by falling stone? I mean, making the realistic assumption that they do everything in the most idiotic order.

[ImagoDeo]

I've done that several times and haven't run into that problem. It would probably depend on the shape of the room you're excavating, how many miners you have, and what the shortest route to each channel job would be.

Of course, unless channeling drops stones from channeled floor sections, then you could just remove all the stone from between the layers before you designate the channels on the edges?

[Girlinhat]

Falling items don't cause injury, as far as I've ever observed.  You can use traffic markers on the edge to try and avoid any dwarves just loitering under it though.

[TruePikachu]

Falling items don't cause injury, as far as I've ever observed.  You can use traffic markers on the edge to try and avoid any dwarves just loitering under it though.

I've observed them cause injury in the present version.

[BoredVirulence]

Falling items don't cause injury, as far as I've ever observed.  You can use traffic markers on the edge to try and avoid any dwarves just loitering under it though.

I've observed them cause injury in the present version.

Yes, falling items do cause injury now. Hence the coinstar, and various dumping related deaths.

[Girlinhat]

In that case, traffic designations should work to keep dwarves from milling about.  They'll still perform hauling tasks, but should generally avoid just loitering through drop zones.