How do I set a no-animal zone ??

[EneCtin]

My pets walk all over the house messing it up. How do I exclude the interiors ? I tried with zoning but could not figure it out. Help, pls.

[TwoTonGamer]

Use the Zone feature. You'll find many uses for it. Go to zones and create a new zone. Expand it to include everywhere you want them to go and where you do not want them to go. Assign them to the zone in the animals tab and that's it.
I usually have a few animal zones. A "Pasture" zone for everyday use and a "Barn" zone to keep them indoors for raids and other dangers.

[EneCtin]

But how do I set those zones up? I mean, Architect->Zones does not allow for that. I can create new zones in Animals but cannot see their coverage or location or adjust them...
Please, detail me how you set up a pasture zone. It must be really outside my experience, I simply cannot figure it out.

[EneCtin]

Ah, create the zone and then in architect you expand it to where you want it.

[M.K.]

remember the easy way to make a small "exclude" zone like the inside of your house, is to select the inside of the house as zone, and then use the "invert selection" button under zones.

I use my dogs for hauling, so I normally allow them to go everywhere. Except for the Hospital and Kitchen, where cleanliness is more important than hauling efficiency

[EneCtin]

Noted.
Thanks to you, both!

[TwoTonGamer]

It looks like you got it figured out. For others that might have trouble, use the expand zone and shrink zone buttons in the zones tab to define a zone. You can assign animals to any zone in the animals tab, and colonists in the restrictions tab.

Super useful zones to create are:

"Compound": Includes inside base and behind outer walls - danger incoming and restricts
colonists behind walls. This is the first thing I do when a raid is incoming.

"Indoors" : Further restricts colonists to safety indoors. Useful for toxic fallout or when
there are no compound walls.

"Pasture" : Everyday animal area outdoors and barn included for sleeping.

"Barn" : Behind walls and indoors for incoming danger.

"Triage" : Restrict doctors to the hospital area for incoming wounded and make sure
they stay there until all the wounded are tended to. I include the prison area in
this as well so they can treat the captured pawns, too.

[Holce]

Make sure that the zone is in one part. Or else they will go outside of the zone the reach unconnected parts. In one play, the first winter I got 10 days toxic faalout. My indoors zone had no indoor connections. Animals started to wander from one room to another walking outside constantly. I had to restrained them more until I connect the rooms.