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[Lolzwheejars]

What's some of your layouts you have made or thought of doing? Have you tried them and do they work respectively well?
Just curious to some of your peoples designs. I made this one here, it'd be one I would use if I had to dig into the ground first, instead of the side of a mountain. Haven't tried it out yet.
Dunno if you can see that or not, I dunno how to add pictures =/

[UnrealJake]

I'm afraid to say it's an error sign. But that would be an interesting fort entrance, kind of like the road runner painting a cliff face with a tunnel that he can pass through, but the cayote can't.

A big red X, painted on the side of a mountain [With kitten blood of course] that only Dwarves can pass through, leading into their mountain home.

[Lolzwheejars]

Sucess! But yeah, I dunno how to post pics >.<
-Is sofa king-

[Aspgren]

I've been sketching above-ground houses to and from. Here's one for the freezing biome that looks good in stonesense and is practical! .. yet impractical!

 /ll\
/l__l\ - ornamental roof
l    l
l____l - bedrooms (2 z levels tall simply because i think it looks good)
l____l - food storage
l____l - food storage
X   _l - entrance from the ground level
 \__Wl -dining room & well. the well is below natural rock and thus doesn't freeze

Not pictured: stairs.

The reason for the several Z levels between the dining room and the beds is because dwarves are friggin' noisy when they eat. This is a problem as it causes noise pollution and disturbs the dwarves .. this design looks good, removes noise pollution completely and the well never freezes over: making it a neat and lockable building, perfect for the tundra! (or. well. taiga since it requires a lot of materials)

[Johnny Madhouse]

If you want to add pictures, you'll need to upload them to the internet somewhere (your image properties suggest that you tried to link the image directly from your desktop) There are several free image-hosting sites like photobucket and imageshack that work well for people new to this, and I recommend either of them. Once the picture has an online address, you can then put that address in between the img tags, or copy-paste the img code directly from the hosting site.

[Hyndis]

I use this basic layout for most of my forts:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-9810-axeglided

Vertical entrance towards the middle-ish of the map which leads to a great hall that is the center of the fortress. Off to the left and right are the main production areas of the fortress, where food/booze, industry, and stockpiles are. Then on the other side of the map, opposite the great hall, is the residential section.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Here is an old and very basic layout I created back in early .40

[Hyndis]

Here is an old and very basic layout I created back in early .40

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I actually based my fortress design on that.

You can see a bunch of similarities, but I just refined things and scaled everything up. My version is focused heavily on passive security. With my DFMA upload you can see the main staircase. That should be the barracks where there is always an on-duty squad, with several more on search and destroy. That way even if I don't do anything at all the fortress will passively defend itself, whereas in your version the entrance leads right to workshops. Also my version of it has a lot of chokepoints (albeit 3-4 tiles wide to allow for huge amounts of traffic) where you can put cleansing pits with 2/7 water to prevent the spread of disease. You can install traps in those chokepoints as well to provide some form of backup security, should both the military and all of the aggressive animals in the meeting hall be slaughtered. The mighty cave crocodile army is fearsome!

[SkyRender]

I almost always opt for the king of efficiency, the Greek cross design with corner stockpiles.  It eats Z-levels for breakfast, but no Dwarf ever has to go far to get what he/she's after.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I really should update this thing to reflect changes in design I've made...

 As for entrances, my latest fort uses an interesting technique to thwart fliers and ground-based units alike: a walled-off outdoor courtyard that has a fully constructed ceiling with no way to reach said ceiling (I removed the ramps leading up to it and replaced them with walls; aren't I clever?).  The entryway is, as ever with my forts, a deathtrap of, well, traps.  Some day I'll have to try laying down some Dwarven landmines...

[Hyndis]

I prefer keeping as much of the fort on the same Z level as possible, which is why I prefer flat embarks since I can keep an eye on the entire surface all at once.

[Shoku]

I do something different from the 3x3 up/down column just about everyone uses. I essentially have a snake that winds down to the caverns. Various rooms jut off of this hallway approximately in the order I'm used to assigning this to the hotkeys.

Depending on how suicidal I feel I'll amp up the entryway to insane levels.

However I've been wanting to do something that is essentially a flat fort except that the plane is tilted. Like you walk in at ground level and then if you go down the same hallway you end up deep underground. So none of the winding my snake usually has but also very little overlap between z levels. The biggest barrier is my trying to work out my really picky style of workshop layout.

[duckInferno]

Apparently ramps are less laggy, or at least, faster transport (less steps required).  So instead of just a stack of up/down stairs, I make a spiral staircase of ramps.  Works well.

Having stockpiles above/below particular shops looks like a great idea, I'm going to try that

[Shoku]

If your spiral ramp is 3 wide, like a good medium to high traffic walkway should be, they will have to take two steps to get to the center (shorter path there if it's spiral) and then around the top they'll need another two steps out. This isn't faster than a 3x3 up/down column. But even so in a 3x3 column they would only take as much as 3 more steps at their target floor. This is wholly insignificant unless they're hauling animals back and forth a lot or something else where they physically move slowly.

[RedWick]

I've been playing with a spiral ramp layout lately.  I like how it looks:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-9869-mothgate

[malimbar04]

the fort itself is always a bit different each time, but the workshops are always built as such:
shift-arrow to make a square. split this square into 4 even sections of 5x5.

Bottom left corner = workshop (enough space for one shop and maneuvering room. Nobles get office)
Bottom right corner = supplies (rock, cloth, thread, plants, whatever is needed for workshop. miner nobles get food and alcohol stockpiles)
Top left corner = personal dining room. Often contains a well
Top right corner = bedroom, generally rounded so each section can be seen easier.

Because it's so modular, I just stack these in a row next to a 3-lane highway. I only deviate with whiny nobles (I want a BIGGER room! and a GRAND office! and my own tomb!), and with useless peasants (go to the dormatory, hauler, and eat in the community dining room. bah... expecting handouts...).

Of course I occasionally flip this or extend the supply room depending on the situation, but it's worked well for me so far.