I'm not quite dead yet...

[peteski]

And you would think that it would be done in such a way that you could use it as location when putting the walls together. But of course its the opposite. And that's why I own a tabletop table saw.

DPM buildings have thick walls,  soft features, and large draft angle because they are molded using simple low cost molds (which were probably not even made out of steel.  They probably also use low-pressure injection.  Still, with such a wide range of kits, and somewhat modular construction, they are great for kitbashing. Plus they represent American buildings not made by anyone else.

Personally I prefer all those DPM "warts" to that laser-cut building kit John assembled.  The add-on details on the walls, look really out of scale (they stick out probably a scale foot out of the wall.  Those "things" over the windows look closer to awnings than to decorative concrete items on a 1:1 building.

And (to the DPM haters), that laser-cut building looks even shallower than the DPM buildings.  None of this is John's fault - the kit was designed that way.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

And you would think that it would be done in such a way that you could use it as location when putting the walls together. But of course its the opposite. And that's why I own a tabletop table saw.

Haha, yep, me too!

[OldEastRR]

DPM is so ubiquitous and used on so many layouts because when they first came out (in plastic bags) they were I think $6 or $7 apiece --- way lower than the other injection=molded plastic kits at the time. Plus they look AMERICAN instead of that old Atlas/Pola/Faller/Model Power stuff. And once you're everywhere, on almost everybody's layout that other people see, then you tend to get chosen for that person's layout when they build theirs.
The thing is the wall styles and window placements are too uniform. Plus they have no large buildings with factory-type large windows. I've modified and kitbashed almost every DPM building I ever built so they aren't off the shelf, but still they convey a general uniformity that most downtown areas built in the same time period have.  That's NOT European.
What I don't like is Woodland Scenics no longers offers a kit version of their built-ups, which cost their weight in gold.

[dem34]

And at the end of the day although it may have came off wrong. I still collect them in bulk when I can, because sometimes you really do just want a quick bit of kitbash fodder. 2 zips on the saw and now I have the back of a row house block or a fairly good size apartment building to snuggle in a corner.

The best tools are the one you know the limitations of.

[nkalanaga]

If you need a deeper building, it's easy to make new sides, especially for mid-block buildings.  Depending on the height of the neighboring buildings, plain styrene sheet can be used, or brick/concrete block textured.  It doesn't have to match the "fancy brick" on the front. 

Also, all buildings in a block aren't necessarily the same depth.  Some go all the way to the alley, others have parking behind them, or space for delivery wagons/trucks.

Then there are the corner buildings, like the one I found years ago in Heppner, OR.  It had fancy cut and polished stone blocks for the front, on the main street.  The long wall on the side street was rocks.  Not even cut stone - ROCKS.  It looked like they had built forms, poured them full of random rocks, grapefruit to basketball sized, then poured mortar over the whole thing.  By the 1980s much of the mortar had eroded away, leaving all of these round rocks half-embedded in the wall.  It did have a few side windows, on the second floor, just holes cast in the walls with wooden windows, recessed a foot or more into the wall.

Many old brick buildings had thick walls.  Many of today's are frame construction with a brick facade.  Back then they were always at least two layers of brick, sometimes three, and could be a foot or more thick.  That's what the "header" bricks, individual or entire rows, are for - they tie the layers together.