I've recently given up on putting my shop into my two-door detached 20'x24' garage. Too much trouble to get adequate electricity out there and I wanted better climate control, so I set up in Shop in the basement.of the new (but old) house. It's 13x26 with 7' to the bottom of the rafters.
Coincidentally, I've just finished up setting up the dust collection.
I've tried shopvacs. I also tried a mobile collector (Delta AP400) with a Rockler DustRite connector, but found that was a pain in the rear and it risked tipping over due to it;s wheels. Once I got a workable arrangement in the shop, I disassembled the Delta base and installed it into one corner of the shop.
I watched several video on the topic and found one to be especially useful and professional - it advised to think of the dust collection as a cars merging onto an interstate - specifically have a few sections of flex hose as possible, avoid "T' fittings and 90 degree elbows as they slow down the velocity of the dust. Also use the same diameter ducts for as much of your system and avoid unnecessary constrictions.
This all fit with logic, my limited knowledge of hydrodynamics, and experience, so this is how I went.
The central collector is the somewhat piddly 1hp AP400 unit with a 4" hose. I *just* installed the high-end Wynn environmental 0.5 micron filter. I will say that is some of the best $$ I have ever spent. *HIGHLY* recommend the investment if you want to avoid bronchitis. I have the collector hooked to a 55 gal chip separator and that to main trunk line of 4" PVC that runs along the long axis of my shop.
I have six (6) "Y" branches with 4" blast gates - one (1) for the chopsaw, one (1) removable hose for general collection and the 13" planer, one (1) for the tablesaw, one (1) for the router table, one (1) for the mortiser, and one (1) for the 6" jointer. The main trunk line end in another blast gate, which is connected by flex hose to my 14" bandsaw. I can unhook the bandsaw hose for dust collection on that side of my shop. I'd like to get a sweep permanently installed, and setup something for my drill press and my router wing on the tablesaw, but I haven't figured it out how to do those effectively. The router is especially problematic as it's on the short side of my unisaw and commercial router table enclosures don't fit.
This is connection #3 for the Unisaw
This is connection #5 behind the Jointer.
So... this all works OK. Not awesome, but decent. The problem is that the central collector is weak. I compensate by closing all but one of the blast gates which gives me pretty good suction. It's a pain to open and close those blast gates, but that's just the situation. It's also a pain to walk over to switch it on, but I can fix that with a remote switch. One thing... if you want one of those fancy automatic switches, they don't make one for tools that run on 220v (like my unisaw) and 110v (like the collector).
If I had the free cash, I'd invest in a more powerful central collector - even a 2hp HFT collector would be a good upgrade, but the 1 hp collector works as well as could be expected and I think I'm getting the most out of it. I'd get a little bit better suction if I left out the separator, but it is a good trade off.
Also... my collection trunk runs close to the floor due to head clearance and tool-wall considerations.
I would never go back to just a shopvac at this point, I only use it for "wet" collection as the two 4" moveable hoses give me significant cleanup capabilities.