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[Lightman]

I built a single-tile bridge that was walled in on all sides. I opened the bridge and dumped stuff into the tile. When I closed the bridge, nothing special happened. Is there a trick to creating an "atom-smasher"? I have all these annoying bones that cause the dwarves horror and I want to destroy them.

[4maskwolf]

Make it a two-tile bridge that raises in one of the directions along it's longside.  Raise the drawbridge, dump things into the sqaure it vacated.  Bring the bridge down.  Profit.

[Lightman]

Make it a two-tile bridge that raises in one of the directions along it's longside.  Raise the drawbridge, dump things into the sqaure it vacated.  Bring the bridge down.  Profit.

Thanks. I am giving that a shot!

Is there a way to allow the dwarves to dump items into a pit, so that they never go near the smasher?

[4maskwolf]

Make it a two-tile bridge that raises in one of the directions along it's longside.  Raise the drawbridge, dump things into the sqaure it vacated.  Bring the bridge down.  Profit.

Thanks. I am giving that a shot!

Is there a way to allow the dwarves to dump items into a pit, so that they never go near the smasher?

Yeah, just create a zone encompassing both the pit hole and some solid ground and call it a pit and dump zone, I believe.  But just put the smasher out of the way and you shouldn't have problems, assuming you aren't too trigger happy with your smashing.

[PatrikLundell]

I've used half a quantum stockpile for this, i.e. a refuse stockpile feeding a mine cart on a track stop that dumps into magma (you can use a pit instead, and have a refuse pile at the bottom). There are two benefits to this:
- Your "dump" functionality isn't tied up to sentient refuse dumping.
- Dumping dorfs won't slip and fall down into the pit (has happened for me into magma).

The disadvantage with the refuse stockpile version is that it's very cumbersome to set up, since you have to manually select all relevant (= those you've encountered so far) sapient creatures as corpse, body part, and bones refuse subcategories (at least) in your sapient refuse stockpile (after first "excluding all" to exclude titans/FBs, which you may want to butcher), and then manually remove exactly those entries from the regular refuse pile.
Also, at a very late stage, you'll find that clown corpses are causing horror, considered sapient, and unspecifiable [i.e. belonging to the same hidden set as FBs/titans, and thus can be sent only to stockpiles that have not excluded all]. My end solution to the clown problem was to stop cleaning out the trap array (there was nothing of value to salvage anyway. Hair could be spun into thread, but the thread could not be further processed into cloth, which would have been cool).

[Lightman]

Yeah, just create a zone encompassing both the pit hole and some solid ground and call it a pit and dump zone, I believe.  But just put the smasher out of the way and you shouldn't have problems, assuming you aren't too trigger happy with your smashing.

The important thing with a pit is avoiding thoughts of horror.  A hatch would probably help, too. The problem with normal dumping is each dumped item adds another "horrified" thought for the next dwarf.  A dump zone quickly becomes a horror zone, due to the bug that makes any body part count as seeing the creature die.

Does it really work to have a dump zone around a pit?

[PatrikLundell]

The hole has to be deep enough for the dumper not to see the mess at the bottom.
My understanding is that dumping into a hole requires the zone to be over the edge, whereas a zone over just the hole doesn't work. Anything dumped on the edge falls over it, down into the hole.
An alternative to a deep hole is a quantum stockpile with the feeding stockpile on one side of the mine cart and track stop, and the (shallow) hole on the other. The dorfs won't have to walk up to the rim in that case, just to the mine cart. You can even have a "links only" stockpile feeding the cart and dump zone on top of it if you don't want to mess with refuse stockpile settings, but the price to pay is that each dumped item has to be claimed again to be hauled into the cart.

[Sanctume]

A 5-z deep pit is enough for the dwarf up top to not see what's down below, even when a re-animated corpses down there are fighting each other. 
Bonus is that miasma does not float up that high.

[ragincajun]

I'm trying this in my fortress.  I built a 2x5 area with a bridge in it, set to raise to the wall side.  I've raised the bridge but now can't place refuse areas. 

[4maskwolf]

I'm trying this in my fortress.  I built a 2x5 area with a bridge in it, set to raise to the wall side.  I've raised the bridge but now can't place refuse areas.

You can't place a refuse stockpile, you designate a garbage dump zone from the zones screen.  This has the added benefit of allowing you to put whatever you want there.

[PatrikLundell]

As 4maskwolf stated, you cannot place a stockpile "on" a bridge, or "under" it while raised. To get things there they will have to be dumped, either manually, or via a track stop linked to a stockpile. Note that in the latter case you should be aware of the fact that the things dumped are now just lying about as far as DF is concerned, and thus eligible for pickup to the stockpile, where it's placed in the mine cart, dumped,... This problem can be handled by forbidding everything that's dumped by the mine cart, but that requires monitoring of when things are dumped. If DFHack is used, the track stop settings can be modified dynamically so that you normally don't dump anything, but rather stock it up in the mine cart. When it starts to get full you can then dump the contents by changing the track stop settings and then change the settings back to collect a new batch. Even if this method is used, it's advisable to forbid the dumped things to avoid smashing haulers with the garbage. Also note that some bodies are large. I think a blind cave ogre takes up 40% of a cart, and it seems this goes for every ogre body part (the sum of the parts is greater than the whole).