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[Muffindog]

I start by digging out a channel on the ground level and removing the ramps. There I grow my above ground plants because they get light that way. I dig out a room next to it, but don't remove the ceiling and grow the underground crops.

The first layer of stone gets a medium-long corridor 3 tiles wide, with various stone, wood and crafting industry workshops in 3x3 rooms. Stone gets immediately dumped near the mason/crafting workshops. Several big furniture and random crap storerooms are made on that floor too, and get expanded when the need strikes.

One level below is my organic industry floor. We have one big, grand dining hall and a big food storeroom. Next to them are the kitchen, still, butchery, several farmer's workshops and all that stuff. If I have the jail it's usually nearby.

The floor below contains the commons areas. All the dwarves are treated equal and get decent 3x3 quarters. Some get better rooms just because of the gemstones in the wall. They all get one bed, cabinet and a chest/coffer and two statues at the entrance. The floor is smoothed and the walls engraved. I usually make the rooms in a 5x6 row. Nearby is a grand statue garden which is open to public, and if we're lucky a zoo. Mostly places where the dwarves idle. Nearby is also a dormitory, because building nice rooms for everyone takes time.

Should a dwarf somehow excel and become a legend, great soldier or just a useful dwarf, they move down to the noble's quarters. No actual nobles reside there, just the greatest thinkers, workers, artists and soldiers. They have similar rooms to the commoners, but bigger with more statues, armor and weapon stands, some columns and more chests and cabinets. They even get a small office and their personal dining room. They get a cage with an animal for decoration too. The two statues at the entrance of their room make it impossible for invaders to evade the weapon trap that's guarding the greatest minds of the fort, just in case something tries to maul them while they're sleeping. The legendary dwarves get their little tombs, nothing fancy, but still better than the communal cemetery.

The hospital is either near the entrance if a river or another clean source of water's nearby, otherwise it's deeper. The cemetery is next door. Here is also an unused panic room with a burrow that gets activated during the civilian alert. The barracks are sometimes located here, sometimes at the top of the fortress. It depends where I get attacked the most - from the caverns or above ground.

[Loud Whispers]

*Ahem*

SURFACE MUST BUILD TO THE SURFACE WE NEED TO GO HIGHER BUILD BUILD BUILD

[Inspiration]

My usual fortress design involves: Long, 3-wide hallway entrance, long enough for ballistae to be effective, and then some. After that, a barracks, and the rest of my fort. I usually embark with a volcano and river source, so I wall off the river valley, and go straight to magma industry.

[SixOfSpades]

I totally hear you on the symmetry thing--I've even named my current fort after it (Marblehalls the Bastion of Symmetry, home of the Rabble of Genius).

I'm actually trying to "beat" a Human-style fortess before I get back to building Dwarven again: The map is a perfectly flat plain, and I'm channeling out the entire first z-level of dirt to get rid of the Murky Pools. Aboveground, it'll have a central keep, inner curtain wall, and curtain wall with optional barbicans, and will enclose pretty much 95% of the entire map--invaders will have to content themselves with never getting more than 6 or 7 tiles from the edge, unless they can fly. The inner curtain shall have a water moat, the outer curtain a dry one that fills with magma during sieges. All of the major structures are perfectly symmetrical, from the dead-center Keep on out.
[Living Temporary: Early defenses consisted of a shallow ditch with only 4 pairs of ramps: Cage traps on the inside, doors on the outside to keep the badgers & raccoons from cluttering up the cage traps.]

Below ground, every z-level is a 3x3 grid of 19x19 blocks, with 2-wide roads between each block (and around the whole grid), with 1-tile staircases at each intersection. There's no thought given to interior defenses or traffic containment, as the outside defenses should be more than sufficient. This may cause !!FUN!! if/when I get berserk pyromaniacs causing widespread havok. The central hall complex goes some 15-ish levels deep (although only 2 are in use so far) without striking caverns or anything, and I aim to keep it that way: "True" mining operations will be based from the surface between the inner & outer curtain walls, so any nasties popping up will find themselves surrounded by fortified positions. Each of the 4 main sections of outer wall will also house a self-sustaining micro-fortress, able to hold out on its own even if the central keep and 3 other sections should fall.
[Living Temporary: Dug out the entire farm level and crammed everything in there while my miners (trained up after digging out all that dirt) carved living space out of the level directly below (which is made mostly out of steel and gold). Every dwarf gets a 2x3 room with table & chair so I don't have to dig a dining hall just yet.) Central block is the exp.leader/mayor's suite.]

[Wirevix]

Normally, my forts are rather messy, cumbersome things, with a not-so-central spiral ramp that has somewhat randomly designated grand halls going off of it at each Z-level.  Compact, completely asymmetrical as I'm far too lazy to tweak it, and inefficient.  But the problem that I have with those is not their inefficiency, but that they are boring!

Thus my next planned fort is going to completely break way from that in that I am going to attempt to make a carved-out octopus underground, a rounded central area spanning multiple Z-levels with walkways and all the "arms" being various functional centers.  I look forward to never being able to remember where I put anything.

[Diicc Tater]

I've got a bedroom block layout that works well for me. Found it in the wiki and altered it a little bit.
Other than that, my forts are all different and grow organically depending on need and resources.

I place still, kitchen, farm, butchers, tanner and pastures close by each other.
Workshops that don't need fire goes in one place/row(s).
Keep the bedroom blocks a few zlvls from the furniture stockpiles...

Layouts vary.

[CaptainBadwheel]

If I have a hill or cliff to carve into I start with the entrance basically carving out the area that will become the barracks first and using it as space for my startup industries. Then I plunge a either a 2x2 stairwell or a 3x3 circular stairwell down till I hit the first cavern level which determines where I'll get water and where I'll put my industrial center. Everything above the cavern level basically branches off the main stairwell which has advantages and distinct disadvantages my dwarves can move really fast up and down but so can FBs and accidentally released critters. After I get my primary industries set up over the 3-4 z's just above the caverns I start carving everything else out in little increments above that. I try to go for some symmetry but I usually end up modifying the fortress around mazes of water pipes, drive shafts, and pump stacks. I've accidentally mined into so many pipes that I've started building large drains in the bottoms of my fortresses. Building vertically means using a dump chute down to the stone stockpiles really helps move it along faster but if something, say a deer, gets out of its cage and scares a hauler it can mean a very long messy drop.

[Hannibal Barcalounger]

I like to make a temporary fortress, just a slit of 3 ramps going down, and then a few sets of 11x11 general-purpose rooms in soil for farming and basic industry.

I try to embark on mountains overlooking a relatively flat forest. Once I have the essentials, I'll build a 2-z wall to make a big courtyard in front of the mountain, so I can have a secure area for chimneys (miasma removal from tanner, butcher, and garbage pit) and above-ground plants or livestock.

Jails, dining room, military training, bedrooms, and other "social" parts go up into the mountain, and industries burrow down below it.

Now that I have some free time again I think I'll make some progress on Torchfancied.

 

[orius]

This is how my current design strategies are going.  Actual layout will depend on the terrain where I embark.  And this is just an initial setup, there's a lot of furnitire and defenses and stuff that need to be placed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fort entrance. Eventually gets a pair of bridges to act as defensive gates, there's a war dog penned there for preliminary defense.  Trade deopt and a large room used as an initial dormitory and starage area, later becoming a barracks. Hospital to the north (well as soon as some beds get placed), a well, and I like to put my wood industry near the entrance for convenience.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Z -1. Agricultural industry.  Have the farms, sheep pens, and turkey coop here.  Butcher and leather industry, stills, farmer workshops, and textile industry. Soap industry would aslo go here.  The main booze storage is between the stills and main stairs so dwarves needing a drink can get smashed pretty easily.  The workshops will tend to go on the second level, but the actual placement of the farms and sheep pens will depend on the location of the soil layers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Z -2. Main living quarters.  I'll go with 4 block of bedrooms like this stacked for living space.  Big dining hall and pantry with kitchens nearby and storage for cooking ingredients. Some basic industries, an office for the bookeeper/manager, and some burial areas.  Also a resevior for the well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Z +1.  Warehouses.  Expand upwards for storage space as needed.

[Caz]

I do a central staircase, and make all the levels circular and interesting (but efficient) as possible.

[Karakzon]

My fortresses vary, but they tend to be of a style of convinience, the more unique my surroundings, the more unique my fortress becomes.

Flat land just ends up with me putting up a curtain wall and thats no fun at all.

[Raptor_a22]

Some epic looking entranceway, usually with fiddly bits like constructed Fortifications that serve no practical use whatsoever except to get rid of all the stone my ledgendary miners inevitably dig up, and so it looks awesome on Stonesense Slate.
Next is usually a bridge of some sort. I've recently built a lot of fortresses next to volcanoes, so its usually a bridge over the magma pipe with some fortifications for ballista and marksdwarves. Then, the main barracks, armoury, ammo storage and trade depot.
After that, another drawbridge over an underground channel to the main fortress, where all the workshops and storehouses are. Usually there is a main staircase leading to the food store, the dining hall and the bedrooms. If there is topsoil available, a small tunnel goes back up for the farms, otherwise theres an underground farm pumping water for irrigation from the surface.

[Stromko]

I've used the same basic building block for my forts for a long time now, it just speaks to me somehow. It started as a big square that allowed easy access to 5x5 rooms in each cardinal and diagonal direction that can be adjusted to house anything, and formed the basis for a tower in the first fortress it appeared in (http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-5354-weaverwalls), it's become something I call an 8-tuple or octuple core for lack of a better word. (edit: Skip to the end and check the other mkv25 link if you'd rather see than read)

I make this first building block by first designating an 11x11 area, carving 5x5's into each corner (2 in from the edges), then a 5x5 at each cardinal direction (1 in from the edge). The center is often dug as a 5x5 room containing a stairwell or something else, and outside that room going in each cardinal direction is a 3x3 hallway that extends through every fortress space.

Lately I have had a fortress-wise pattern that has worked well for me too, which rather mirrors the inner pattern. I build more of the 8-tuple rooms around the central core one, with a 3 or 5-wide hallway (depends whether it's between cardinal or diagonal 5x5 rooms) dividing them and providing access between the cores. In my last three fortresses, I've had on my main fortress level 9 of the octuple blocks or cores, in a 3x3 pattern with the hallways between them.

Horizontally, each core only has access to each other core on the main fortress level. Cores above and below are storerooms and/or kitchens only that must be accessed by stairway from the matching room (workshops to storerooms, dining room to kitchen & kitchen storage, living quarters to living quarters). These extra spaces (with the exception of living quarters) have outer corridors dug as well, but instead of joining to the other rooms they're just for extra storage.

Workshop spaces will see the cardinal 5x5 rooms assigned doors to seal them off for moods gone wrong, while corners have non-moodable workshops, stockpiles, or minor stairwells. Kitchen spaces are just like workshop spaces, except they may have dining quarters and food stockpiles as a dedicated layer underneath them. Living quarters see most of the 5x5 rooms converted into three, 3x1 or 4x1 shafts that become bedrooms, with the inner-most diagonal 5x5 room turned into an entrance and stairwell that allows easy access to the rest of the fort-- it's the inner-most diagonal because my living quarter cores are situated on the outer diagonals (NE, SE, etc) vs the rest of the fortress. The center space is usually for stockpiles, but in the LQ's case I make more bedrooms in the center.

Main stairways are always contained in 5x5 rooms centrally located, with doors and/or linked drawbridges to close off access to the upper or lower levels (depending on whether it is above or below the core of my fortress). Mining and cavern access isn't central to the fort, but instead is from a more fortified room leading down from the smithing / smelting block, which is itself usually located south of the center. Minor stairwells are used to access stockpiles or other additional space, and tend to be in the corner rooms.

Above my main fortress level are a couple more features I've worked on. Firstly, there will be a small surface fort on the surface, with the trade depot in the first room proper (with a roof and all) that is itself inside of a larger curtain wall. The barracks will be just past the trade depot-- my entire military is used to the outdoors without getting rained on. Also in the surface fort will be the beginnings of a refuse pile (continuing further down via artificial floors that allow airflow). Well-water access and the beginnings of plumbing will also start on this level.

Below, between the surface fort and the main fortress, on one of the soil or sand layers ideally, there will be a large excavated space that will be allowed to grow into an underground forest.

Throughout the fortress, I try to ensure wherever possible that there are sufficient chokepoints for the placement of doors.

Noble quarters, jails, and hospital spaces will be just outside of the main cores in an outer network of 3-wide or 5-wide corridors. Since the outer corridors don't go anywhere on my man fort levels, it's perfectly fine to just turn them into rooms since my dwarves won't have to walk through them to get elsewhere. In fact the outer corridors aren't even linked to eachother.

I'll post my latest finished fort that has this design up on mk25 in a minute to make it easier to read. (Here it is: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-10907-ironhelm)

[magmaholic]

i usually dig a giant hole,and surround it with walls.
i try to channel the ground,making as few tunnels as possible.
so the fort would be *open*

[fijkus]

Well, my fort is in early game. Right now though:

First hallway:
23 tile long main hallway. Currently has 10 cage traps. I'm installing iron weapon traps as iron weapon parts are produced, which has the bonus leveling my weaponsmith. This will mean that there will be alternating cage traps and iron weapon traps for 20 squares.

Drawbridge, then trade depot. Because fuck you.

Short hallway leading to stockpile. Will have a couple of traps with a drawbridge.

Another hallway, then staircase. More traps and bridge planned.

Staircase, then hallway, then my main workshops (for now). After the workshop pods there's a hallway to another staircase, to the next z-level. Traps and barracks planned.

Stiarcase, then hallway, then my metal working industry, then staircase. Traps and such are planned, because by the time I have enough traps I'll be moving deeper underground anyway.

My central staircase. Mining out the fourth z-level for all it worth, will likely add the new metalworking pod there.

6th z-level: food storage and kitchen.

7th z-level: Offices, dormatory, living quarters.

Current plan to run my game conventionally until all resources are consumed, then try to make a hell shot.