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[VerdantSF]

I have tons of empty bins sitting around.  Some stockpiles, like leather, cloth, and thread, actually use them as as new mats arrive, but others, like bars of any type, seem to take forever.

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The stockpile to the upper left is for soap.  Years will go by, with plenty of idlers, and few of the empty bins to the south will ever get used.  In contrast, the leather stockpile just north of the bin supply is kept tidy.  I don't think it's a function of distance, though, as the armor and weapon stockpiles further away also use bins as needed without delay.  Bars seem to get looked over all the time.  Is there some sort of hidden priority issue?

[sirdave79]

Ive seen something similar and wondered.

I think bars stockpiles have wheelbarrows and my theory was that the number of wheelbarrows limited the number of incoming jobs to the stockpile, meaning that if you have a full stockpile of bars and one of leather, and u set them both to use bins at the same time (this is where I sort of noticed a higher priority/faster "binning" of non wheelbarrow stockpiles in my fort), a much larger number of dwarves can starting "binning" the leather.

No idea why none would get taken there tho if you have bins lying around, if of course you have a few idlers (which you do).

Im not 100 percent but I think my bars stockpiles also dont always fill the stockpile with bins, they seem to leave some bars laying around. I thought maybe they just dont unless the stockpile needs them, ie you have enough space for your total number of bars without using every bin possible. Again no idea why but I just assumed it was to do with the wheelbarrows thing.

[Larix]

It could be a capacity issue - from what i've seen, if a stockpile can still accept new bins, the dwarfs will assign _one_ new bin, then fill it, and only once the most recently added bin is full a new bin will be added. And they can only fit five bars into one bin, while with other types of items, you can have hundreds in a single bin (notoriously the case with cloth). So the bar stockpile goes through - assign a bin - wait until five "stuff items in bin in a ridiculously inefficient manner" jobs were generated and executed - assign a new bin. Especially when the feeder workshop is a long way from the stockpile, those jobs take forever and a day to execute and you can get very long pauses between jobs.

Use of "active" bins is also more likely to happen when items are shifted in and out of stationed bins - this happens a lot on clothing stockpiles through claiming of fresh clothes or on leather/cloth stockpiles when materials are removed for crafting and free capacity for new storage jobs - but will typically not happen on soap stockpiles, so the "old" bins are fully dormant and only the newest bin sees any activity. In my experience, bin-accepting bar stockpiles eventually stuff their contents into bins, but it takes quite a while.

^The only stockpile types which automatically have a wheelbarrow assigned are stone stockpiles. You can assign wheelbarrows to any stockpile you want and set the number of wheelbarrows reserved by hitting the "w" key while in the stockpile's "q"uery menu.

[smjjames]

Since so few metal bars fit into a bin, I've found that it's best to just quantum stockpile what would otherwise become a massive stockpile and saves on hundreds of bins. I also don't tend to move around lots of metal.

Blocks have a similar issue, but they aren't as bad.

I actually quantum stockpile most things that are in bins.

[VerdantSF]

Good point.  Atm, the only quantum stockpiles I have are dumpsites, but bars and blocks make sense, since ostensibly they should be easy to stack from floor to ceiling.