Couple of quick comments from a fairly recent arrival on these boards - firstly, use whatever method you want to pass save files around - the usual is to use
Dwarf Fortress File Depot, but I've seen others used, and even just e-mailing the files. Best to just stick to zipping or RARing the region folder, as that's pretty standard and you never quite know what sort of stuff the next person has to decompress stuff.
Second, building above ground can be very hard work. Unless you use some sort of utility to automate stuff, it takes a lot more time and attention than digging things out. A 6x6 underground room with a door can be done in about a dozen keypresses - to get the same outside, you need to build 27 sections of wall one by one. And then a door. And a floor, if you don't want dirt/mud underfoot. And a roof, if you want the place to be sheltered - which involves first building a way for the dwarves to get on top of the walls, and then building floor at that level - which you can't designate all at once, but can only designate constructions that are supported by the existing walls or other bits of roof, so it takes a while before you can even tell the dwarves to close the thing over...
(and the way I found out how much work it took was by trying to build a huge tower all the way up the Z axis, and ending up with about 2 complete levels and a staircase in the middle that went up to the top...)
It is a nice idea - everything would look great in the 3d visualiser - but I'd make sure there was a util somewhere that made building outside easy before committing to it.
(edited to add link)
[ June 08, 2008: Message edited by: Jools ]