Presently this is my favourite design strategy. To be repeated N times vertically. Provides 16 rooms per floor == 240 rooms per 15 layers. Living area on some middle floor (usually -5 to -7) is usually mined out completely, creating the Royal Dining Room (maybe with the floor above used as mist generator). Top floor bedroom area is usually mined out as well to create barracks. Workshops alternate with storage space or may be replaced by water/magma channels where necessary.
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Expansion:
1. Any two adjacent bedrooms can be quickly converted to one 3x3 bedroom.
2. Internal 3x3 space can be used to expand bedrooms or place personal offices/dining rooms/statue gardens/etc.
3. Design can easily be replicated horizontally, creating alternating columns of housing/workspace. Dunno why that would be needed unless the popcap is set to 300+.
4. Any three adjacent workshops can be replaced by two 5x5 workshops where necessary.
5. Blueprint incorporates one 3x3 bedroom and one 3x3 communal bedroom, as well as two 5x5 workshops.
Compatibility.
1. Design is 100% compatible with 15x15 exploratory mining pattern.
Distances and noise.
1. Typical distance from dwarf's bed to his workshop is about 6-8 tiles.
2. All beds are at least 5 tiles away from workshops (noise factor 4).
3. All beds are at least 10 tiles away from digging/mining space (noise factor 8 ).
4. Typical distance from workshop to stockpile is within 5-7 tiles.
5. Distance from any bedroom/workshop to the dining room (located approx. on -7 floor) is within 10-12 tiles.
Miasma.
1. Miasma-generating workshops/stockpiles can be placed in the corner areas, only accessible diagonally.
Trade.
1. Trade depot located on the surface in the very center, with tradegood-generating industries clustered at the top floors. Distance between tradegood stockpiles and depot is usually within 10-12 tiles (plus any distance that needs to be walked on the stockpile).
Defense and security.
1. All workshops are isolated and can be locked if when necessary.
2. Fairly complicated surface defence structure assumed (not covered here).
3. Nobleproofing not covered. The easiest method is to dig a separate living space for nobles outside of the main structure including all the necessary "precautions".
Comments and suggestions are welcome. :-)