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[Alastar]

What useful little features do you incorporate into your projects that make them more useful or technically sweet? Points for being easy and and widely applicable; the sort of thing that makes you go 'why didn't they simply...' when looking at other people's fortresses. Bonus points for simplicity, compactness and overall elegance.

I love the ability to turn pressure on and off with the pull of a lever, by installing doors that will block orthogonal  connections while a diagonal one is always open. Usually in additin to a standard on/off switch, of course... and often in sequence so I an set to which z-level everything will be pressurised.
Using this on both inflow and drainage, this allows very controllable selective flooding and a few other useful tricks.

[Tywuzhere]

Mine's simple... I just mine downwards, each level serves a different function
It usually goes in this order
First level underground: Barracks ( so if the enemy invades, they enter where my military already is.
Second level underground: workshop level
Third level: Farms... if there's a water source I can channel, if not, I have down the hallway in the first lower level.
Fourth Level: Stockpiles
Fifth Level: Dining hall/meeting hall.
Sixth Level: Bedrooms.
Then I just go from there, but that's the basic layout, I almost always just go down, then I only have one small point of entry to defend, just the stairs.

[Dorf3000]

Magma channels.  An elegant way to power forges without having their magma source drain away when you expand is to dig 1x1 channels in your forge room where you want to put the workshops, then pump a small amount of magma into the room itself so that it fills the holes and then evaporates from the floor.  You'll be left with independent power sources for your forges and also get rid of the non-magma-safe stones in the room.

Trade depot.  If you can design it so it fits into a shallow pit with ramps down to it, you can then cover it with a bridge to protect the traders, or use it to drown them.  You can also build a walkway above it with a garbage zone defined, and then dump all your crafts/junk you don't want to use there.  When traders come, unforbid what you want to sell and then move it to the depot (it will be distance 0) - it'll clear out your stockpiles quicker, the Dump Item job is higher priority, and you can have one idle dwarf (the broker) do all the Bring Item to Depot jobs at once.  Even if you prefer trading a couple of gold figurines for the entire caravan, you can gift away all the junk they are able to carry, rather than atom smash it.  It's especially useful if you do a lot of gem setting because the jeweler won't pick up trading goods or forbidden items, and if you've dumped everything except the masterwork pieces then they can't really get it wrong.

[Internet Kraken]

Since I build my fortresses over the ocean, it's hard for me to compare my fortresses to others and see the advantages/disadvantages of mine. One thing I do wonder about is why some players manage to confuse levers. I place all of the important levers in one main control room and color code them. I've never been confused about which lever to pull.

[martys1103]

I place notes on levers so i could check what levers do when i need to use them.

[Osmosis Jones]

Pump pressurise all aqua/magmaducts; that way, the fluid travels at the speed of pumping, NOT the terribly slow normal spreading rate. If I need to divert off the liquid, I have a pump feed through a diagonal depressuriser, ensuring a steady, well behaved supply as needed.

Also, having floodgates toggle in reverse to doors allows for some greatly simplified lever linkages.

[Shurikane]

I make a sushi machine for grinding down gobbos, which I place right next to my goods and bones stockpiles.

Quick, efficient, and allows me to loot them at breakneck speed!

[chewie]

I just developed a efficient only ramps using central staircase: Link
I'm not sure, if this works. I haven't tried it yet.

[Osmosis Jones]

EDIT: NVM. Can't read drawings. Bluh.

[The Yellow Peril]

Not really some great revelation, but I tend to get annoyed by my own tendency to want to place things on the same level. In theory, the optimal 3D shape of your fortress should be a cube, with some kind of central staircase. Too often I see people (myself included) build fortresses which are more cuboid in shape, with a bias towards more x and y tiles than z tiles.

[Rallion]

Not really some great revelation, but I tend to get annoyed by my own tendency to want to place things on the same level. In theory, the optimal 3D shape of your fortress should be a cube, with some kind of central staircase. Too often I see people (myself included) build fortresses which are more cuboid in shape, with a bias towards more x and y tiles than z tiles.

I'm pretty sure, based on my limited geometric knowledge, that the best shape would be more like an octahedron (as in a square pyramid on top of an upside-down square pyramid), assuming your goal is to minimize the maximum distance between points. Also, this assumes the use of the central shaft you mentioned. Thinking about it with more complex vertical movement options makes my head hurt, even though I don't think they affect the optimal shape very much.

[Toast024]

I honestly suggest not to use central staircases. Using simple ramps can save allot of fps in the long run.

[Oneir]

Not really some great revelation, but I tend to get annoyed by my own tendency to want to place things on the same level. In theory, the optimal 3D shape of your fortress should be a cube, with some kind of central staircase. Too often I see people (myself included) build fortresses which are more cuboid in shape, with a bias towards more x and y tiles than z tiles.

I'm pretty sure, based on my limited geometric knowledge, that the best shape would be more like an octahedron (as in a square pyramid on top of an upside-down square pyramid), assuming your goal is to minimize the maximum distance between points. Also, this assumes the use of the central shaft you mentioned. Thinking about it with more complex vertical movement options makes my head hurt, even though I don't think they affect the optimal shape very much.

Technically the most efficient shape should really be a sphere, since the surface of a sphere is equidistant from the center and all. But if you look at the way DF deals with diagonals (namely saying a diagonal step is the same distance as an orthogonal step), three tiles in any direction turns out to be a square. Which means in DF circles are square. And that circles tessellate. Oh, and that cubes are spherical.

[Ethereal.Frog]

AAAAAAHHHH EVERYTHING I KNOW IS A LIE

[breadbocks]

Cool. You just squared the circle! Take that mathematicians!