To reproduce: fill all your inventory letters until you can no longer pick up random things, and have a wood axe in your inventory but no 2 by 4s or scrap wood. Then, chop down a tree and chop the trunk that falls into wood planks via the construction menu. Cataclysm hangs afterwards - probably by trying to put the newly created planks in the inventory but being unable to do so.
In my experience if CDDA wants to crash it’ll crash, not hang. What are your system specs and how long did you give it before you gave up and closed it?
I’ve found a couple things that will make it hang instead of crashing. There are a few infinite loop bugs that I’ve spotted (/created)