While I’m drafting out this piece I occasionally get systems which overlap (see page 5 bar 211). Sometimes the overlap is even greater and two systems are superimposed.
Overlapping ‘comes and goes’ randomly. I can use gallery view to work on these bars but it’s a bit of a nuisance.
For this draft layout (I just love Dorico layouts 
) My layout options are already chosen to get me a biggish space between systems.
So: what goes wrong
Sonata2.1.dorico (1.3 MB)
just in this one place?
A worse example of the same thing. Why does Dorico overlap only this pair of systems ?
The only way I can fix this is to keep adding bigger and bigger gaps to my layouts - that seems a ‘funny fix’. Have I missed a flag somewhere in the docs -perhaps a flag that says “never overlap systems”?
Adjusting those values will not enlarge your paper size… If there isn’t enough space, then these values can not be applied.
Go to Engrave Mode, make sure you have Signposts visible.
Read out the percentage at the very bottom of your layout. If the signpost is red and shows a value exceeding 100% then you will choke Dorico.
Slightly reduce staff size until it shows 100% or less.
In your first example, you’ve just got too many systems on every page.
You could probably make up a bit more space by removing some of the low-hanging rests in additional voices that aren’t necessary.
Is there a reason that you’ve got almost non-existent margins?
I’ve reduced the Minimum Gaps, and increased the inter-system ideal gap to 14.
Sonata2.1.dorico (1.3 MB)
Thanks as always for helpful answers. My big mistake was using “Minimum Gaps” to do what “inter-system ideal gap” does.
Yes - This is a layout for composing to provide the maximum number of notes displayed on the screen (and yet provide sufficient gap so that dynamics and system track never overlap).
In this layout I’m constantly adjusting the height of this page to put the contiguous passages I’m ‘improving’ in the centre of a page (at large zoom). Much better than trying to work on a passage split between the bottom of one page and the top of the next. Gallery view has its uses but only a few measures are visible (even on large monitor).
(Now a “Gallery View with Wrap” - presenting three to five horizontal “Gallery views,” well vertically separated on the screen, would be a marvellous enhancement).
I have another A4 layout for printing.
I wasted nearly two hours last night trying to lay out three simple SATB songs. Whatever I did systems would overlap unexpectedly unless I intervened and started adding manual system breaks. 
Finally I cracked it. 
In Choral music the dynamics are above the stave and the text is beneath. To avoid overlaps you need.
It would be worth adding this hint to the help documentation.
Tony,
it all depends on your page size and the rastral size of your staves. And on your page margins.
It is good you found a solution for your individual requirements.
The Inter-system Gap can only fall into place, if you have enough space on your pages and you haven’t forced a casting off.
A hint: if you think, you have messed up a layout, you can always create a new one (and discard the messy one). In Setup Mode add a new score layout.
That’s a much bigger value than I would recommend, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see it recommended in the manual.
In general I’d suggest you always specify the smallest value you’d be willing to accept, and then rely on Dorico to space the staves and systems further apart via justification. I expect you’d find that reducing the inter-system gap value and instead changing the vertical justification values further down that page of Layout Options would give better results.
I typically create choral music, and my defaults are 9 spaces for the inter-system gap, and 5 spaces for staff-to-staff.
If you want me to have a look at one of your choral projects, then I’ll show you what I would do with it; and you can see whether that is useful.
That is so very kind of you and I will take you up on your offer as this is quite close to being ‘finished.’ I have a choir ready to sing this and I can give it to the choir director, (provided my ferocious dragon-like 
tutor doesn’t start pulling it apart on Saturday when I next see her. )
ThreeWelshChildrensSongs.dorico (2.1 MB)
I guess today I’m still fighting the layout system.
Two Points :
I want to three systems per page so that the choir is not endlessly turning pages and I don’t bankrupt myself creating “n” 60 page copies when 20 will do.
I wish I could get Page 10 to look nicer. It’s almost right but at the end of the movement I usually arrange for the last system not to be quite so low down the page. But if I drag the lower margin of blue box containing music up half an inch it re-paragraphs that page. [It is pity there is no “last page” template]
The first thing is the Staff Size. 6mm is still quite large for a vocal score, (go and measure a choral score by OUP, Novello, etc.) and it’s amazing what a difference 0.5mm or so makes.
Size 6 will give you a bit more room: my usual default is slightly smaller than that.
Next: your Minimum Gaps between staves and Systems are much too big. They define the ‘buffer’ between items. The System Gap is also much too big. The effect is to produce pages that are always massively overfull, so Dorico gets confused.
Your Justification percentages are also wrong: The second % should be larger than the first. I usually have the first value at 60%, and the second at 100%. That means that the page gets justified if it’s more than 60% full, and the stave gaps will be stretched as well as the system gaps.
You seem to have deleted the contents of the Flow Heading Template, rather than just chosen to turn them off in Layout Options. Either way, you’ve got no titles for each song as a result.
I’ve created a new Layout from scratch. The only manual adjustment is changing the Note Spacing in Flow 2 to fill the music to the end of its last page. Also, one System break for a new section at the start of the page.
This literally took under a minute.
ThreeWelshChildrensSongs.dorico (2.1 MB)
My solution for your page 10 would be to increase the Note Spacing for that Flow, so that you get 3 systems on the final page.
TBH, you probably want a larger lyric text size, which is going to make the layout flow onto more pages.
EDIT: I’ve spent a couple more minutes increasing the lyric size, to be more legible at the smaller staff size, and a few Note Spacing Changes to compensate.
I’d recommend everyone change the Engraving Option for Lyrics > Minimum SPACE (not Gap) to ⅛ space.
Maestro @benwiggy 
Jesper
Wonderful and useful explanation, @benwiggy! Thank you!
Wonderful. Thanks ever so much. (I’ve saved the layout as my choral default, applying it to the rehersal score produces a great SATB+keyboard print straight off . )
