As of now The Castle and Croup Manor. I like the settlements with centrally located wide-open spaces and pre-exisisting structures i can tack onto. I currently have huge towers encircling the central structures built at both places which have inspired me to construct more settlements like-so.

Here's a building tip for those who may need it: take a wall/ floor/ and roof prefab, place it, then connect nothing more than flat roofs to it. Move the prefab, fill in the missing place with another flat roof (or leave it, if you wish to create a balcony), then place the prefab atop the now free floating roofs you just crafted. You can build towers as high as the settlement will allow you this way. Attach walls to the roofs and/ or place flooring under them, furnish them to your liking. You now have the schematics for creating huge towers.

I found Croup Manor and love the house and ocean setting. It's just so damned far away from everything else. Might use it as a second home, though. Except there's 20 dead ghouls in a pile in the driveway, lol.

Greygarden! I just finished my huge barracks/tower that allows me to get onto and build on the destroyed two level bridge. My settlers and their beds are in the tower in living areas, and my personal area is the lower bridge level. Then up top I have the trade center and military station. Complete with artillery and several sets of minutement T-45 armor in case any settlers decide on extra protection during an attack, they can hop in them. I never use T-45 anyway, so all the extra sets I find I just paint and put in one of my settlements.

I love Croup Manor, a rustic old house that I made into a settlement complete with 3 stores. I used the existing structure, no other construction added, just repaired the floors (lots of rugs) and walls (exterior and interior) and roof. I loved how the house came alive when I added lights everywhere I could, I'd just stand off in the distance and admire the house, got a lot of satisfaction out of bringing life back to an old house that stood dark for a long time. I just didn't like the respawning dead ghouls festering up the place, especially the one that hangs between 1st and 2nd floor. Put a bed over his position to at least hide him.

mybye "offtopic" ..but building frustrates me every time, does someone know a good simple tutorial ?? am a little jalouse when I see those beautiful buildings built by players.....

Yeah, it's pretty frustrating. I spent a good 20 minutes just trying to build a staircase up to the roof of the Red Rocket before I finally settled on a physics defying floating ladder. It just works.

That really bugged me too. After messing around with the stupid ladders for awhile, I seriously think I spent 20-30 minutes with it, I finally came up with a decent solution. First, I put a floor/ceiling piece on top of the Red Rocket to attach the staircase to and added the extending sidewall to use as a doorway. I then added the raised platform to the back of the lower end of the stairs then added the other 2 ladders. Makes it look pretty decent.

http://imgur.com/tsKMrBP

Cool, may have to do something like that cause mine looks like a joke, lol

Call me unoriginal, but I still prefer Red Rocket and Sanctuary Hills. Sure, it can be tiresome having to always go so far up north just to head home, but its that sort of isolation I also can't help but to like as well. I use Red Rocket as my personal home I live by myself in, but Sanctuary Hills as the settlement I tend to just down the road, when the folks need me.

I know you already said you have no interest in Sanctuary because of the Minutemen (and I don't blame you) but it doesn't take too much to remove that Minutemen influence on the settlement and create something of your own. Me personally, I turned it into my own little raider town. Place is heavily fortified, guarded by some elite looking raiders, and is rather intimidating in appearance on the outside. However, on the inside is actually a prosperous community that is well protected by that tough exterior. In a way, it is influenced a lot by what Caesar's Legion is. A ruthless and brutal force that offers security for those seeking it. Here are a couple of shots:

http://imgur.com/a/mzhXf

It's not entirely finished, but I don't plan on doing too much with it. I prefer making real looking settlements that you would expect to see in the Fallout universe. Not too fond of building giant houses or mansions. But like I said, all you have to do is give Preston the boot and maybe let Mama Murphy OD, and you can carve Sanctuary into anything. Only thing you can't get rid of being the Minutemen music that plays. This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjy8XqJClTc would be far more appropriate for my Sanctuary.

Red Rocket is by far my favourite, but it is out of the way. I like that it comes with all the workbenches so a low level charisma character can make it his base.

EDIT: Second choice would be the Lighthouse, but it's also not centrally located. I'll make it my beach house later...

You can just use one of the small prefab steel rooms as a landing for your stairs. Then up on to the the roof from there. Looks good.

I tend to stick with the Red Rocket with no settlers allowed. Keeps them from taking my stuff.

However I am leaning towards Greygarden for later in the game. The robots don't use weapons so they will not raid my collection when an attack happens. Plus they don't sleep so I won't find them in my bed when I want to take a nap. Another bonus is Supervisor Green, he happens to be a merchant, so I don't have to run to town to sell off my junk items.

I'm not a fan of building on the highway over passes so I will probably have to spend some time leveling out the slope with foundation blocks and building on top of them.

The only real drawback of Greygarden is the lack of open water to build Water Purifiers on. But having a robotic merchant on hand cancels that out as far as I am concerned. I can get Purified Water from another settlement.

A few other settlements have merchants living on them but your back to the issue of human/ghoul settlers stealing your weapons and sleeping in your bed.

For those wanting some place already built you do have a few options. There is Home Plate in Diamond City. You can decorate it to suite your tastes. Another is a room in Vault 81 that you get after doing a few quests. It has a bed and storage for your gear. The biggest draw back to these is no crafting workbenches for your gear in either place. Diamond City is a bit better with workbenches just outside. But, you have to haul your crafting supplies outside when you want to craft anything.

Finally, you can take any of the settlements and use it for just yourself if you choose to. You just have to kill off any settlers that are there before you. Just don't have any companions with you when you do it. Most get upset when you kill settlers.

If I could pick any spot on the map I would take the Atom Cats base. Assuming I could clean up and get rid of the junk yard its set in. Red Rocket building as my home and the big barn as my workshop and Armory for my Power Armor. Some foundation block walls with turrets and you have home sweet home.