It took me two weeks to figure out that if you hold the button to pick up an item you can pick up move the entire structure you've build.

Building settlements got a whole lot easier from that point.

Oh god, the time I wasted.

Tips,

Foundations, found under "Wood Structures"->Floors, two choices 'Concrete' or 'Wood Platform'

You can either build off of foundations by snapping to them or if the foundation you made is rather big you can try to build on top of the foundation if your patient cause the edges of your foundation will try to snap.

What I do is I make a Foundation Ring, with about 9 empty squares for the Prefab Rooms to snap inside of my foundation ring. This will make your building look like it has a nice wood porch that rings the whole structure, you can even place a railing all the way around to help that look along.

If your not in the mood to create your own building after you've made a nice big foundation well just place a bunch of Shacks on it and call it a day.

Tip, if you highlight any foundation piece and then hold the 'E' key for a long time on that piece, Then all pieces connected to it will be selected. Once you have done that you can clip the entire structure and even place the whole thing pretty much anywhere you want, even with a hedge or Tree clipping through it. You could have the ground like a hill clipping into your house if you wanted or place it up in a Tree too.

Tip,

For Sanctuary

the best spot to build up a fort with beds is actually over by the River. You want to build up some Foundations that stretch out into the River like a Dock for boats right. Then you place some Water Purifiers there. I built up my fort right over there with turrets facing into Sanctuary. If you do this right you then have quite a nice large field to plant stuff and you can just place walls, picket fences, or wire fences between Sanctuaries Houses.

When your Sanctuary gets attacked well, all the Spawn Points are away from this location, either by the Main Bridge or over by that Big huge Tree, so by doing it this way you can pretty much maximize the amount of firepower you bring to bear on Spawns. Building a big fort on that River side also looks pretty cool plus as an added bonus you can place some guns to kill stuff that spawns normally on the other side of the River

Tip

Remove every piece of furniture from the houses in Sanctuary, this prevents the Settlers from trying to disappear to sit on the butt in some random chair.

TIP,

When making a Store, place the NPC's Bed close to it.

Tip,

Building a really big master piece takes quite a bit of time, so best advice if its not entirely your thing is after you have figured out placing foundations is just to add a few pieces then go off explore or do a quest. When you get back add a few more pieces. Over time the settlement starts to look cool and well this also gives you some time to think about how to expand without burning out on the creative process.

Tip,

Resources you will use the most are Wood and Steel.

Wood is actually really rare in the game, you can purchase a Shipment of 50 Wood every 24 hours from Abernathy Farm.

Wood can be salvaged from Double Barrel Shotgun, Hunting Riffle, Combat Shotgun, and Combat Riffle.

Clipboards, Mops, Brooms, ScrewDriver, Ballpean Hammer, Picture Frame, Tri-Fold American Flag, Pencil, and quite a few other items all have wood.

The most annoying part is separation of what LOOKS effective versus what IS effective.

Walls look great, but aren't recognised for defence at all, even if you manage to build one. However, one guy wandering aimlessly between three distant guard posts IS.

Settlers are happier if their buildings have doors but leave them permanently hanging open into the road. (And why open outwards? You can't blockade those doors!)

Settlers want you to indiscriminately coat everything with paintings to improve the settlement's 'beauty'.

To meet your defence requirements, turn your settlement into a prison camp with guard towers and turrets everywhere. There is no alternative.

No defensive points for being in a chokepoint, being sheltered by buildings/cliffs, being in a remote or hidden area. Every settlement is as vulnerable as an open plain.

...and if you want walls with 'windows', your choice is between a 'wall' that's more holes than wood, or an overhanging piece with support beams designed to block furniture. (Settlers don't like the use of railings it seems.)

Tip

Paintings don't improve Happiness

Beds under a roof are better than outside

At level 14 you can get the 2nd rank of Local Leader, this allows creation of "Stores" and "Crafting Stations"

Some stores make settlers happier, that's about it for making settlers happier.

When your Building an actual House/Fort of your own, try to use stuff from the "Metal Structures" section as much as you can, so that you can save on metal resources. If you want an interior Doorway your best bet is to use the Metal Hallway with Doorway in the Metal Structures Section.

Try to remember that a lot of the stuff in settlement building is pretty much optional its all about what you want from it, this isn't mandatory part of the game, you could play the whole game without this. So really its just about having fun in the game in a completely different way.

Scavanging Stations don't count against you for your total Defense needs like say Water or Food

Since you can make all your food at a farm and all your water at Sanctuary well you don't have to place food and water at every hole in the wall spot, so this means those places don't need to produce anything and that means they wont get attacked or its very rare if they do. This is done with Provisioners Level 1 rank of Local Leader...Though if a spot isn't productive well why make it?

Some followers like Codsworth are bad to bring along when you intend to pick up every item for building settlements...Ya those Clipboards are like gold for building and uh Prestin will be all like what are you going to use that for?

Is there are way to fix houses that are still standing in Sanctuary?

If possible it will be nice.

I haven't seen a way to fix up Sanctuary Houses but I'm sure that someone out there will be making a restoration mod when the Geck/Construction Kit for the game releases.

There are quite a few people interested in having more stuff for settlement building but I caution you that right now ESP's are made without official tools so chances are they are going to wreck your game if you use them at the moment.

Now you got me building. Went to the red rocket. 4 stories on the roof. Hollowed out the middle so hope to have enough space for the walls. Without supply lines I can walk my whole materials over. Get away from Preston who won't take orders from me anyway. With 2 large settlements I'll have to get steel at the drive in and ten pennies or Oberon had a bunch of trees.

Yep. Although instinctually a good idea, walling settlements is a waste of resources. I start my settlement construction with a central building and place defenses from there. I make sure turrets are elevated in some way and can cover everything on the property in a full circle arc. I also arm my settlers with accurate long range weapons. This becomes much easier to do the higher level you are. I don't have any assigned guards anymore because automated turrets + well armed work force will kill anything in seconds when I show up to "defend" them. A guard post is 2 def. Heavy machine gun turret 8 def and requires no electricity. I'd rather have more farmers/scrappers. Make sure your generators are elevated, completely walled off, and well defended. They seem to be favored targets for everything that can attack a settlement.

I do use the window overhangs on the odd chance I can snipe something during an attack. Mostly they just provide good views though. Odd they don't lean on railings like they were so fond of in Skyrim.