40d:Sand

Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of small bits of rock and minerals. There are five different colors of sand – tan, yellow, white, black, and red – but their only difference is their appearance on the ground, as there is no difference between them for purposes of glassmaking. Sand typically appears in deserts and along ocean beaches, but is occasionally found in other biomes as well.

Sandy clay, sandy clay loam, sandy loam, and loamy sand are not considered sand by the game and thus cannot be used for glassmaking.

Due to a bug, stone floors where a tower-cap or shrub grows will turn into a random soil type, which will sometimes be sand.^[Verify]

Sand in fortress mode

Sand is used in the production of glass items at a glass furnace. Dwarves with the item hauling labor turned on use bags to collect sand from sand tiles if there is an activity zone that has sand collection enabled on them. There is no other way to obtain sand. To get bags to fill with sand for your fortress, create a leather bag at a leather works or a cloth bag at a clothier's shop, or buy the bags from a caravan. While the bags are being procured, press i at the main menu to bring up the activity zone designation screen. Find some sand on your map and draw the zone over it. Once this zone is constructed, make sure to turn it into a sand collection zone by pressing s. Next, construct a glass furnace. You cannot do the collect sand task without a glass furnace to activate the task at. Once the building is constructed and your bag is finished, queue up a sand collection task and your dwarves will begin collecting sand.

It may be useful to construct several glass furnaces (non-magma is easier) and have several "collect sand" jobs queued on them at the same time, so that you have enough filled sand bags on hand to keep your glassmaker(s) supplied. Collecting sand requires the "item hauling" labor. Moving filled sand bags requires the "furniture hauling" labor. To have sand bags stored near your glass furnace, create a furniture stockpile with only "sand bags" enabled (this is selected via the u key in the furniture/siege ammo submenu of the stockpile settings menu).

Sand bags are stored in furniture stockpiles. When customizing stockpiles, the option to include or exclude sand-filled bags can be found in the lower right corner of the Furniture sub-menu. You will need to set the stockpile to accept the quality of the bags themselves. Collected sand is listed under powder on the stocks menu.

Farming

As all sand types are soils, farm plots can be built on them without need for irrigation.