How do you get work orders to spread across all workshops?

[Giant Space Hamster]

I built second copies of most of my workshops but all my general work orders get sent to the first one built for each type. Am I missing something? Is this a known bug?

As an example, I have two jewler's workshops and four related general work orders made in the general work order screen, not on either of the workshops directly. All four work orders get queued onto the first workshop and the second sits idle. I have two dwarves assigned to the proper work detail for these tasks and neither is on a military rotation.

[Dio]

Did you set the work orders up from the actual workshop or from the Work Order tab? If you set them up from the actual workshop it only counts for that workshop. If not, try enabling the work detail for everyone and see if that is it, your other dwarf might just be a lazy one

[McFuzz]

If something has multiple orders (Like make bed 10/10) it will assign 1 job to 10 workshops then stop assigning. If you only had 4, it would assigned it to all 4, then assign a new bed order on the first 6 completed jobs. So make sure you have more than 1/1 set up, even if it's a repeating job.

There's also a button that changes how many workshops it's assigned to, it's the plus and minus down the middle column in the work orders tab. Set it to "Can use any shop" (default)

It's not a bug, cuz it's working for everyone else. Sounds like there's some troubleshooting to be done.

[Giant Space Hamster]

I got it sorted, but I'm not entirely sure what was wrong.

Two of the work orders were set to 1/1 and the other two to 5/5. All four work orders were only being sent to one workshop. I changed the two 1/1 to 2/2 and suddenly all four work orders started flowing to both workshops. The strange part is that reverting the 2/2 back to 1/1 (the 5/5 remained unchanged) only restricted those two work orders to one workshop from then on and the other two 5/5 orders continued to go to both, unlike before.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Giant Space Hamster:

I got it sorted, but I'm not entirely sure what was wrong.

Two of the work orders were set to 1/1 and the other two to 5/5. All four work orders were only being sent to one workshop. I changed the two 1/1 to 2/2 and suddenly all four work orders started flowing to both workshops. The strange part is that reverting the 2/2 back to 1/1 (the 5/5 remained unchanged) only restricted those two work orders to one workshop from then on and the other two 5/5 orders continued to go to both, unlike before.

Check their own Order tab. They can only individually do/track up to the number of Orders set in that tab for those sorts of Local Orders.

I think that's meant only for local orders (individual shop Orders). But, you could try making adjustments there and lower them on one to see if some work load is shifted to others. (If so, I don't think that's how it's supposed to work, so... a bug?)

They can only actually work one order at a time. So, at any one time, the Orders shown in a list for a shop could be changed once one or more of that same shop type finishes Work Orders sent by the Manager. (I "think." Not sure, but that's the way it feels with that system.)