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[eataTREE]

I like flat maps, where I can start with a single stairway into the ground, preferably surrounded by timber. On the second soil layer I dig storehouses and kitchen areas (which start as temporary bedrooms and everything-storage area. The first soil layer is reserved for the moat, dug around the entrance and usually reinforced with a nice wall with sturdy metal door (I <3 steel doors) and retractable bridge -- any filthy human fort has a drawbridge, but a bridge that retracts? That's dwarven. Dining areas, bedrooms, and other areas whose quality matters go in the first few rock layers.

The advantage of this setup is that I can work on the fortress from both ends -- I can add as many walls, reinforcements, and traps as I like to the structure above ground, while digging out useful areas of the fortress below.

[Dorf3000]

I always, always start with a temporary area hollowed out of a hill or in a soil area that I'm going to collapse later on; no walls except the outside, one entrance, everything mixed together.  It's supposed to be temporary until I decide on and start digging/building whatever actual project I have in mind, but quite often lasts for 5+ years as I work slowly and tend to focus on the project part rather than the 'where dwarves will actually live' part.  I really hate it when I dig some rooms or a set of stairs and then later they interfere with my plans to make something more impressive, especially around the entrance.

[Kharel]

My forts' starting location determines my initial layout. I tend to prefer large, flat areas where I can build the Ultimate Fortress, but the last fort I started is on the side of a volcano.

For my normal layouts, I prefer an above-ground entrance. That is, I'll build ramps/staircases into a tower, which rises a few z-levels. This tower then has a retractable, long drawbridge to a second tower, which contains another staircase leading down into the ground. The second tower usually has a pillbox at the top that can cover the first, as well as fortifications and siege weaponry that can cover the nearby ground. If I'm feeling particularly paranoid, I'll surround the whole thing in walls, moats, and drawbridges, and put a lava pit underneath the entrance drawbridge. Underground, the top few levels contain farming, workshops, storage, housing, storage, and workshops (in order of increasing depth). This design has the advantage of being impervious to anything above-ground that isn't flying once you raise the bridge, and deadly even to most flying creatures.

My latest fortress (still under construction) is, as I mentioned, built into the side of a volcano. As such, I've modified my usual two-tower design to a single tower, which has the obligatory bridge-over-lava-pit leading to a perfectly flattened cliff face, where the fortress resides. One z above the entrance, fortifications carved into the face of the stone allow the marksdwarves stationed there to fire at anything on the far tower or bridge. Interestingly, the volcano has a river bisecting its dual peaks, about 10 z-levels below my fort. Thus, I've constructed a staircase down 11 levels, used the river to flood a farm down there, and dug a wide channel beneath the river to the volcano's magma pit (which is actually in the opposite spire from my entrance). I intend to use these levels to form not only my magma smelting/workshop operations, but also an indoors obsidian factory.

[NewsMuffin]

Great Dwarven/Goblin/Kobold Hotel^TM:

Build a large wall around my wagon, with enough room for an above ground farm. Then I go up a lefel, build walls, floor it off, then rinse and repeat, while digging down for the stockpiles. Make sure there are doors to your great dwarven hotel.
The first floor should be an above ground farm, then the level above that should be a barracks, then the next level should be bedrooms and dormitories. The top floor should be a dining hall, while the roof can be anything you feel needed. Make sure the barracks floor has fortifications on the entrance side, for your marksdwarves.
I'm currently doing this a Kobold Camp game.

[sinister agent]

So far mine have been fairly ad-hoc, though I usually try to group similar industries together by tech level (I know DF doesn't have them and this is a Good Thing, but it makes some sense to me to consider things like carpentry and masonry as low-tech, while crafts are medium, and forges high).

The one I'm on now is divided by floor - the floor above the entrance is for sleeping (with a barracks a good distance away, above the entrance with its own tunnel for emergencies, with the main floor for food, general storage and a few offices.  One below is for carpentry and light crafts.  Below again you get furnaces for making fuel and metal, with lots of storage, and down one more is the heavy industry. 

In theory, most workers will only have to go back and forth between two levels for their supplies, and with the way the stairs are placed (including dedicated tunnels for getting to food and beds), there'll be very little overlapping traffic.  Below that is a network of mining tunnels, with tombs worked into the mined-out seams.

The downside is that at the moment my defence philosophy is basically to obliterate everything before it even reaches the entrances.  If anything gets inside, the guards will serve largely as a distraction while I self-destruct half the fortress.

Long term, I'm carving sheer cliffs everywhere, then turning entire mountains over to different industries, and connecting them with heavily trapped artificial bridges above ground, and extended mining tunnels below.