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Hey,
I am about to run my group of PCs through a short dungeon crawl. Now, the way I'm used to doing things is that players map the dungeon as they go, and whenever a room has an enounter in it I have them roll initiative while I draw the enlarged battle map on my basic flipmat and place the minis. This works, but it also takes a lot of time to setup each encounter, which goes a long way towards slowing the pace of the game and lowers the excitement.
What I wish I could do is to somehow having the encounter areas drawn in advance, I mean like the entire dungeon, on the flipmat, so that whenever we start an encounter we just put the minis on the flipmat and stat rolling dice. Of course the problem is that I don't want the entire map to be visible to the players, because that will take a lot of the exploration feeling away and make the game more like a board game...
So how do people handle this?
If you already know where your encounters are going to be, then go ahead and draw them on your flip map and just turn it face down. Then, when the battle is supposed to start flip the map over and place the minis (which you should already have sorted out and placed discretely to the side) on their pre-marked places.
Also, if you aren't already using them, use dry erase markers rather than wet erase markers onyour flip mat.
Additionally, make sure to have your own copies of the battle areas on your own graph paper, rather than trying to make them up on the spot. I'm sure you're already doing something similar, but I'm just mentioning what helps me.
I've also taken to using the pre-made flip mats for most of my encounters. I then just mark on them to tell the players what's different or new from what comes standard on the map. At $10 each (or so) at my FLGS, it's an expense I'm willing to go through for the time it saves. Plus, since one cavern room is pretty similar to the next in real life anyway (or one dungeon corridor, for that matter), the lack of uniqueness doesn't break immersion for my players as much as having to wait twenty minutes for me to draw them a map. Plus, our minis rarely look like the monsters we're fighting anyway, battle map abstraction is par for the course.
Between battles, however, my group doesn't use minis or mats. We might have a map so that everyone is on the same page with where things are, but usually that's just a hand drawn graph paper map that the I cover up with bits of paper and reveal as they move along. Minis are only used when tactical positioning is necessary.
If the entire dungeon fits on a map, I will draw most if not all of it down. We also got one of those big rolls of butcher paper and I'll sometimes sit down with a ruler and pencil and just draw it out (Then if I'm ambitious or thoroughly bored I'll color it in with colored pencils)
Then I have a bunch of scratch paper cut up into different shapes that I use to cover the map as best I can. That way when players move into and out of rooms I can just lift up the page and I'm good to go!
I've been toying with picking up some light grey translucent plastic to simulate "fog of war" but I haven't had the time xD
Another option based on funds or resources is draw it out like I suggested on a large roll of paper (Can pick one up at Ikea I think?) and ruler the squares out, then you cut the dungeon up into rooms. So that you just place the paper down and place the minis. If you have an easy way of getting cardboard boxes or drink a lot of beer (Whoops...) you can cut those boxes up and use it for backing on the rooms, so they're a bit more sturdy.
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I've been at this for a long time, and I think I've finally settled on a system that works for me. I mostly run published adventures, and I always hated taking their beautiful cartography and turning it into my meager doodle on the battle mat. Your mileage may vary, and it does require some special kit, but here it is:
For places where all the areas are known to the players in advance (like outdoors, or a tavern, or somewhere they've been to often) I use Paizo's flip-mats where possible.
For everything else, I get the pdf (either of a complex flip-mat, or out of the published adventure), and load it on my iPad. Then, I cover the image with another layer (there's lots of apps that do this), hook my iPad up to a computer monitor or small TV, and show the players the dungeon a bit at a time by removing the covering layer on the pdf.
I run actual combat by sketching out on my Chessex battlemat (using MapPacks where I can), and putting minis on that.
So, take from that what you will.
Just remember: DON'T USE DRY-ERASE MARKERS WITH A CHESSEX BATTLEMAT
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If your looking to create maps ahead of time, especially for one short kind of things that you won't need again I would suggest looking at getting yourself some Gaming Paper. It's sold in rolls rather similar to wrapping paper and comes in a few different sizes and types.
We've been using it for a while and it's a really handy way to have things on hand before the game. Plus it folds up pretty nicely.
Now it's not a long term solution for an extended dungeon crawl if your not careful with it, but it's pretty sturdy for paper.