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[Cephas]

I'm attempting to build walls on all sides of the caverns to prevent things from eating my woodcutters while they work. I just discovered that things will spawn on the edges of the map even if it isn't the normal floor. (Ex- on top of constructed walls that had open space above them) Can I be assured that if I wall all the way up to the ceiling, no problems should arise?

[Levi]

Should be fine, that is what I usually do when I first get to the caverns.

[Drawde]

Unless there's water on the edge of the map.  Then you have to worry about swimming forgotten beasts.  I'm pretty sure those can destroy grates, so if you want access to water there's no way to block those out.

[Hyndis]

Walling off the land is easy enough. Just make sure you have some soldiers protecting your masons until the walls are finished. It works fine once the walls are done.

Water is more difficult. You may want to instead wall off the water. You can't build to the edge of the map, but build a wall on the coastline of the underground lake.

[goge]

Unless there's water on the edge of the map.  Then you have to worry about swimming forgotten beasts.  I'm pretty sure those can destroy grates, so if you want access to water there's no way to block those out.

colapse a ring or if you want a single line through a floor, fortify the bottem level of your colapse wall to allow water to flow but no FB.

ex side view

x.x.x
x.x.x
x.x.x
x.x.x
x____
.....
.....
~~~~~
XXXXX

when you colapse you get

x...x
x...x
x...x
x...x
x_x__
..x..
..x..
~~x~~
XXXXX
_ floor; . openspace; x wall; ~ water.

from lake floor to sealed roof, 100% locked in.

[anotherthing]

I collapse cavern walls in to the water as well. That'll leave a two square gap between the watery edge and where the cavern blocks fell. I then build floor and wall on top of them to make sure nothing gets in. About the only place they might be able to get in is where I put my pumps to pump the water out of the cavern.

I've never had critters pop through a wall I made covering an entire open wall section of a cavern. They'll pop out on top if it's not finished, but never through the wall.

[Hyndis]

You can fix the pump weakness by putting a grate over the water. Pumps can pump from water through a grate just fine.

[anotherthing]

My pumps are walled on both sides of the output. I'm thinking of things with the building destroyer tags coming up and smashing the pumps from below. If they can chew up the pumps, they can chew up grates. The input side has a grate just to keep my dwarves safe in case of a backflow. I drown a few like that!

[Hyndis]

Buildings cannot be destroyed from below.

[Snook]

Exactly... So just floor up the water, wall off the edge, and install a hatch if you want to fish it still.

[numerobis]

Buildings cannot be destroyed from below.

Hmm...  I had a chickadee fly in to my fortress once, and the floor grate was broken.  It's not impossible that it flew in another entrance (I hadn't learned my lesson yet) and later smashed up the grate, but are you totally sure about that?

[gtmattz]

I cheat and only use one cavern layer with 20 z levels above so that I can drop stone slabs across all the openings without having to actually venture forth into the caverns and face the nasties.  I then have time to set up a decently equipped military to send in and deal with anything that got trapped, then I usually set up a series of tunnels  connecting the exposed areas that all funnel into one main area where my military can deal with them on my terms..

[anotherthing]

Buildings cannot be destroyed from below.

So, the self contained 8x12x8 FB/FUN shelter I'm making 90 z-levels below the surface complete with water reactors to pump out the whole cavern just in case everything goes BOOM is totally unrequired? Oh well!