Clearing biomes

[Kabrute]

generally speaking I have 2 approaches when clearing biomes.  With caustic I use tricky digging as shown

I dig stripes from left to right then go back and fill in the pattern you see.
with the swamp biome I use a pool of water as a catch and ladders everywhere.  Of course, I don't do that here because you can occaisionally hit the 100t limit when clearing a caustic biome in the "jungle" style.  However using stripe digging as shown keeps more, smaller, piles of debris and keeps dupes from getting stuck on weird ledges....

[PhailRaptor]

I make use of the full 4 tile height Dupes can reach.  Identify the top of the area I'm going to dig, and simply draw a 4 high row all the way across.  Leave a row below that for the Dupes to walk on, then another 4 high row below that.  Repeat for the full height of the area I'm digging.  Then as the Dupes finish a level all the way across, dig out every other block on that floor, then one at a time dig the end block(s) back towards my Ladder or whatever is the entry point.  All the debris accumulates at the bottom, where it will naturally stack itself up and await pickup as the project completes.

[0xFADE]

In the cold zone I build ladders across and up separated by 4 horizontally.  But that pattern looks pretty clean.

[BlueLance]

I do the same as Phail, but i usually only do that for my maintenance shaft. Otherwise I rarely dig out large areas

[Ambaire]

4 hours ago, Kabrute said:

the 100t limit

What limit is this?

e. Also, seeing that image makes me wish it was possible to copy and paste dig/etc designations. Blueprint a structure and paste a copy elsewhere, etc.

[PhailRaptor]

There appears to be an arbitrary limit on how many tons of stuff can be considered a single object.  However, in my experience, I've never seen a single chunk containing more than ~26 t of rock.  In fact, when Alt-Qing stuff around to stack it up, I it always stops combining at around that mass.  So I'll end up with 3 to 5 chunks of 23 t to 27 t of, say, Igneous Rock.  And another 2 to 4 such chunks for Granite.  Etc.

[XEVEN]

11 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

I make use of the full 4 tile height Dupes can reach.  Identify the top of the area I'm going to dig, and simply draw a 4 high row all the way across.  Leave a row below that for the Dupes to walk on, then another 4 high row below that.  Repeat for the full height of the area I'm digging.  Then as the Dupes finish a level all the way across, dig out every other block on that floor, then one at a time dig the end block(s) back towards my Ladder or whatever is the entry point.  All the debris accumulates at the bottom, where it will naturally stack itself up and await pickup as the project completes.

If you use a ladder as a "floor" dupes can strip mine 4 above and 3 below for a total of 8 tiles.