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[Chattox]

Layers all the way

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level 0: Outer yard, defenses.  Refuse stockpile, butcher's, tannery.
Level 1: Entrance & Trade Depot (Farms here if not enough soil)
Level 2: Farms (if not L1)
Level 3: First stone layer.  Barracks and defense needs
Level 4: The Hoard (stockpiles)
The following layers can be transposed
(Level 5: Workshops
Level 6: Mass Housing
Level 7: Dining/meeting hall, stills, food stockpile (sometimes on same floor as Housing))
Level 8: Mayoral and bookkeeper's Offices, potentially future noble arrangements
Level 9: Crypts
Levels 10+ Major mines.  Excavating rooms on the other layers often provides "enough" raw materials, so random projects like kickass royal rooms, arenas, etc. are dropped here.
Top of Caverns 1: Thanks to advanced worldgen, always at least 25 layers down from the surface.  the rest of the underworld (bar one place) is quite compact but I take out a lot of surface stone.
Unused levels - a sealed stair going down is all that's here.
Bottom of Caverns 3: Below this I assure myself around 5 stone layers, and generally I build my Magma Indiustries in one of them:  Layer M0 has the forges, smelters, and other magma workshops, as well as stockpiles.  Level M-1 (1 above) has dormitories, food stockpile, and eating space.  Level M+1 has the magma template.

Good sir, your layout inspired me! I've drawn up basic plans, blueprints if you will, for my next fort. I can photograph them and post them here if anyone would like to see them

[Nyxalinth]

First layer:  Trade depot, farms, and outside I have what I think of as the 'stinky industries' tanning, butchering, and the fishery along with the refuse pile.

Second layer:  Stockpile for finished goods to be traded

Third Layer:  Workshops and materials stockpiles

Fourth layer:  living quarters

Fifth layer: barracks

Sixth layer: Nobles and the catacombs

Seventh layer on down--mining, and when I draw mine pictures, they go here

[Melissia]

Currently, I typically use the following:

Top:  Farming layer, trade layer, large general storage (non-stone, non-ammo, nonwood, etc).

Z=Top-1:  Crafting layer.  A + shape layer with individual 5x5 crafting rooms jutting off from it.  Occasionally has farming as well, depending on terrain (current one has a small strawberry farm on this level, using the trick to let you grow them underground).

Z=Top-2:  Smelting/furnace layer.  A + shape layer with several huge bar storage rooms for storing metal and charcoal bars, and many smelters/furnaces of various kinds.

Z=Top-3:  Initial/noble's housing.  A + shape, with a kitchen on the west wing (primary food storage to the west of that), and three arms jutting from that with either 3x3 or 3x5 rooms depending on the value the person has to me.  I usually put a legendary dining hall between the staircase and the kitchen/food storage.  Rooms have a minimum of 2xstorage (G), bed (B), table (T), chair (C), and 4xstatues (S).

O---O
|SBS|
|GCG|
|STS|
O-D-O


Z=Top-4:  Barracks, commons housing.  A + shape, with a barracks on the east wing, and three arms jutting from that with either 3x3 or 3x5 rooms depending on the value the person has to me.  Rooms have 2xstorage (G), bed (B), table (T), chair (C), and 4xstatues (S).

O---O
|SBS|
|GCG|
|STS|
O-D-O


Z=Top-5:  Immigrant housing.  A windmill shape, with lots of 1x3 rooms jutting from its arms.  Rooms have storage, bed, and table.


Z=Top-6:  Mausoleum.  A few 3x3 or 5x5 rooms for nobles, but mostly a large commons room.

Z=Top-7:  More Barracks, another food storage for the (two or three) barracks on this level.

Z=Top-8:  Hospital.  Placed low so that anyone suffering from an attack by a cavern beast can be put in here quickly.  My dwarves have a remarkably low rate of injury on the surface.

At least that's how it is ideally.  Not how it always goes, sometimes I need something else NAO so I build that instead and push another layer down further, or push things on the same level.

[ClkWrkJester]

Door, hallway iwht traps. In current fort, there's 4 levels of traps, each with 2-3 distinct "Trap Rooms" then a 2 Z level cavern with a front gate. Behind that, barracks.
Then in order.

Storage of basically everything.
Workshops.
Living quarters around a central kitchen area with farm.

Animals are stored in a covered pit up top.

Below living quarters are the mines, whcih are combined with the prisons and noble quarters so if something comes boiling up it eats the criminals and nobles first.

[Doughnut189]

With the trade depot in the nexus of the fort, to which everything else may be accessed. I generally keep it on one Z-level, but as time has gone by my fortress design has changed. Mostly aesthetics. My storage rooms are generally near my workshops, though.

http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv350/Doughnut189/smilewithyou.png -Early fortress

http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv350/Doughnut189/Voulez-vous.png - More recent fortress

Farms are usually pretty close to the surface.

[Iren]

Mine are pretty medieval, everything is digged at demand (as new rooms, workshop places, etc) in a messy way on the first/second level. Then I channel to magma setting a small living place at every cavern level, ending in a magma powered metal industry zone with plenty of food depots, bedrooms, dining room and probably a well.

[King DZA]

Normally, i prefer my fortresses to be sprawling underground cities, rarely needing to go deeper than five z-levels. But for my current project, I've had to step out of my comfort zone and go for a more layered approach:

Surface:fort entrance, trade depot, and, in time, a keep.

F1:Stockpiles.

F2:Farms, various workshops/industries.

F3:Housing/offices.

F4:Massive dining room(incomplete).

F5:This is where i'm planning to put my dead, and possibly my Hall of Fallen Champions.

The fort is still pretty new, so there's still lots of stuff to be done. But that's all i got for now.

[Victuz]

I'm horrible when it comes to laying out places. I always end up with a convoluted squary mess of things but there are certain things that I always do:

A) All my corridors (except for mining shafts) are 3 tiles wide, after about 15 tiles I always leave out the middle corridor to place doors.
B) I use decentralized layout for just about everything so every layer has some bedrooms and a dining room with small food stockpiles in it, it always worked ok for me.
C) One and ONLY one main entrance to the underground area itself. The keep above ground can have up to 4 entrances.
D) One Z level is nothing but huge stockpiling areas for everything. If a workshop ever needs something specific (like the masons shop building stuff out of obsidian only) I just set a smaller stockpile next to it edit it properly and use "take from a pile".

That's about all the things I ALWAYS do. Other than that I usually build stuff according to the need. For example if one of the layers is made almost entirely out of precious materials and flux stone you can bet I will make bedrooms there.

[GreatWyrmGold]

First, I dig out a quick right-underground place, including trade depot space (later to contain a trade depot), storage areas, and workshops. Then I dig gown to stone (if I haven't yet) and build a dining hall, alco-hall, food storage areas, and a dormitory. At some varying point I get around to creating individual bedrooms. Eventually (the later the more I try, it seems), I breach the caverns, then make a well drawing at first from the caverns and then from a cistern pumped full of water from the caverns and completely walled off. Then, I make a hospital. This is all assuming I don't change everything because of my embark, of course.

[Lexx]

I have the entrance being only 1 that can reach the fort interior. Usually a long coridoor with some traps for thinning siege numbers with columned hallways leading to the main door. Which funnels into a wider hallway leading out into the main fort. The main tunnels are 3 tiles wide with alleyways branching off them. I like to segregate areas so they specialize. So the entrance level is storehouse, military, depot and barracks and armoury. Then theres the food production level. The residential levels complete with grand dining halls and finished food and booze stockpiles. The workshop levels where everything gets made ( usually right above or below the warehouse levels for efficient transport of goods) and the crypt/mausoleum levels. I also enjoy giving nobles their own estates for an extra challenge. Rooms hanging from the top of tall caverns, Spires reaching out of the peaks of mountains or castles in the caverns are favorites of mine.