My hood pretty much never lets me place lots where I want to place them, and yesterday I remembered that Lot Adjustor has some kind of move option. I've never used it though, and I'm not sure how it works.

When using other Lot Adjustor functions, one needs to pick up the lot and snap it back into place. But that kind of defeats the purpose here, since the game won't let me place the lot where I want it. So how does the one work, exactly? Is 1 in lot adjustor corresponding of 10 squares in game? And what happens when you've used it?

All of my lots are flat, and the terrain is flat. I'm certain of that. I am very rarely able to pick up a lot and place it back down in the exact same place, so it's not really a matter of flatness. It just doesn't like life. Sometimes I can try a place once and not be able to, and the next time I open the game it works just fine, despite nothing having changed.

I don't know if this will help any, but I had the problem where it looked like my neighborhood terrain was flat, but apparently wasn't since I couldn't place lots where I wanted to (even after using the modifyNeighborhoodTerrain cheat).

I was using Desiderata Valley as my main hood. So I created a new "custom" neighborhood using the Desiderata Valley template in the game. This new hood comes flat around the roads I wanted to put houses on my main hood. With HoodReplace, I copied from the new empty DV template to my main DV I wanted flat and it worked great! I could now place houses where I wanted to. (Although I also had to raise the overall terrain up a little since some of my houses got flooded near the coast line).

I know mine is flat, but that's not the point I'm not looking for help on how to make the game less picky. I just want to know what experiences people have had with moving lots with Lot Adjustor.

How do you even play the game if it doesn't let you place Lots where you want them?
This seems like a serious problem, to say the least and I frankly don't know why you're even messing with Lot adjuster to try to work around what sounds like a much more basic problem with your game.
That said, I have no idea what might be causing your game to act this way. Is it just one hood or all of them?

Edit: And by the way, the header for this thread should not be, Moving Lots with Lot Adjuster, because Lot Adjuster has nothing to do with the problem. It should read, Can't Place Lots in Neighborhood, or something similar.

I've moved lots with the Lot Adjuster several times. I've even moved so they are not connected to the road at all (I love that you can do that). Make a scrap neighborhood to fiddle around with it, and once you've got the idea of how it works, try it in your real neighborhood. That feature is awesome.

I've moved plenty of lots with the adjuster. When you do anything with the LA, I've never had to pick up and put down again. I mean I do sometimes to regenerate the roads but you don't need to AFAIR. With some builds you simply can't pick up and put down anyway (for example overlapping lot builds - an example will be coming with Polgannon).

Sometimes, the problem with lots not snapping back is to do with using fences round the edges. Sometimes, if I want to move a lot, I have to go in and delete the fences and then it will snap. The fences make the edges 'hard' IYSWIM. Also, when lots will not snap, the terrain editing cheat can help - especially the smoothing option (which flattens the terrain) and also, putting a larger size lot temporarily over the area you want to flatten (or over the road) can help too. Not being able to snap is usually something about the game not being able to reconcile the edges. You can often put a blank lot (you know, one of the templates in the bin) where you can't put a built upon lot. It's because a blank lot has malleable edges.

When you move with the Lot Adjuster, there is an option somewhere in the advanced section to blend the neighbourhood terrain to the shape of the lot and also lot edge flattening options - this can sometimes cause issues if you are putting the lot right up against another - you get tears. However, if everything is flat, you usually can't see it or don't have a problem. I usually fiddle about and try different options and only deal with edges if I need to. There's also a regenerate road option if you need it. There's precise information about all this, I think, on Moo's download thread. I must have read it somewhere.

Anyway, you can also move about with SimPE - manually so to speak. The lots know where they are in your neighbourhood by using 3 coordinates (basically X, Y and Z) and you can edit these in SimPE - the trick is to know what coordinates you need (this is basically what Moo put into the LA but in an easier to understand format). Sometimes this is useful though it is a bit of a fiddle.

Perhaps if you said more precisely what it is you are trying to do I can give you more information?

The instructions for using the Lot Adjuster explicitly state that as a final step in the process you're supposed to pick up the altered Lot and place it back down. Changing it's location is optional.
From my reading of Mootilda's sacred scriptures (and I mean that respectfully, lol), the reason for doing this is so that the Lot Impostor, which creates the neighborhood image of a Lot, will reset itself to the new altered Lot parameters.


If you re-read the OPs very first sentence, you will see that she apparently has more serious issues with her game, or at least with the neighborhood she refers to, issues that have nothing to do with the Lot Adjuster.

I've used the lot adjuster to build "stacked lots" on a number of occasions now, and I haven't encountered any problems with them (so far), that I've been aware of. I've never used it to place lots in spots where the game would not allow me to do so due to (possible) terrain issues, though, only to place lots on top of each other (which obviously the game also doesn't allow, but it's a different kind of not allowing!).... :-)

No that's not to do with the Imposter - the imposter is recreated through making the 'structural change' in the preceding step (i.e. a building change of some sort. I usually delete and replace one square of flooring. You can tell this has worked because you entered the lot when it looked blank and when you save and exit, the imposter is in place).

From Moo's tutorial thread (my emphasis):

2. Load the lot and make one structural change, such as moving a door or window (and then moving it back).
3. Save and return to the neighbourhood. The buildings and other structures should now re-appear on the lot, although the lot may still seem to overlap the road or other lots.

And then this:

4. In the neighborhood view, pick up the lot and move it until it "snaps" to the road.*
...
Technical information: This step convinces the game to recreate the road for the lot, and to reconcile any discrepancies between the lot and the neighborhood.

Followed immediately by this:

* Note: Although the standard procedure is to move the lot, this step may be optional or even counterproductive in certain rare situations. Unless you have a strong reason to avoid this step, I would recommend that you do it.

People who are using the LotExpander for advanced purposes may need to skip this step. Advanced applications include: creating intentionally overlapping lots to mimic linked homes, creating long beach lots, and expanding a lot over the road.

You see, it's recommended but optional (and I can tell you from bitter experience expanding over the road means you SHOULD NOT pick up and replace if you don't want your lot to completely bork).

The pick and move stuff is about placing the lot where there is room for it and regenerating the roads if necessary though Moo made the Regenerate Roads option in the advanced settings for precisely the type of purpose she's referring to there (I know this because I was one of her beta testers - for the Expander anyway). If you make the lot where you want it to go, there's no specific need to move it and though I will lift and replace lots for the road stuff, if it won't go or I'm doing something weird, I don't do it.

No, the title is exactly what it should be. My game does not have a serious issue, and I don't need help trouble-shooting or finding the problem. The game is finicky about placements of lots, everyone knows that. So thank you, but stop trying to tell me what to do. This thread is about Lot Adjustor and the move-option. I know you aren't a big fan of it and think it borks things, but my game, my choice

As for how I play despite the fiddle-ness of lots, I simply figure it out each time. May have to uproot half the hood and place them back in specific order for it to get accepted, but I can usually get things back in place eventually. On rare occasions, something has to move permanently due to not placing back, but I'm usually stubborn enough to get it to accept it. But it is a lot of work fiddling, and there's always a risk, so using a program to place it where I want it would be much easier.

@Maxon: Thanks! Very useful information. Did not know one can use SimPE for it. What should one open to do this? Lot packages, or hood? I'll use Lot Adjustor, but it'd be good to know where it's done manually too.

The lot I'm currently trying to get in place is the farm, which I want edge-to-edge with the church. But it might just be as simple as both of them having fences, so I'll try that first. Both of them currently refuse to be picked up and put down in the exact same location, so I have a feeling I'll have to resort to Lot Adjustor either way.


EDIT: I tried to remove fences (and flowers/hedges) first, but it still didn't want to place. So I used Lot Adjustor to move the farm, and everything is fine. I can even pick it up and put it back down. Now to figure out how to get a 2x2 next to the farm

EDIT2: As I guessed a clean 2x2 would not place next to farm, but I placed one further down the hood and used Lot Adjustor to move it to place. It works fine, and will snap into the same place if I pick it up. So all that fiddling I used to have to to do is totally over Thanks everyone for the information.

Do you think it has something to do with how the church is placed with the edge of the lot going passed the road? I'm wondering if the game thinks the church should be further to the right making it so the farm can't connect closely. I've had this issue myself with flat lots not placing together and I'm sure it's just the game being picky not game trouble.

Lot Adjuster Question (or I can make another thread if you want gummilutt)
If I want to make the backyard larger I need to enlarge 5 at the front and 5 at the back, correct? (I have only ever shrunk lots before) Then I assume I need to move the house 5 tiles forward so the front is the same and the back yard now has 10 more tiles. How do I do that and not mess up the road? I tried one and really messed up the road placement.
I am using this lovely house by triciamanly https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=556722 to be my new winery and want to make room at the back for the vineyard.

No, jo. If you want 10 tiles in the back, you should add 10 to the back. No need to mess with the front and the road. Doing what you said would just end up with the house 5 tiles further back

It might be the corner-placement, I don't know. The lot on the other side of the farm, placed at the corner, is also very grumpy on both sides, and can't be re-placed. At this point I've stopped questioning why the game does what it does, and just try to find a way to make it less grumpy.

Really? I thought it always had to be the same number of tiles on each side.
I knew if I did 5 at the front and 5 at the back I would then have to move the house forward, something I wasn't looking forward to, I didn't know I could skip all of that. So it's simply a matter of adding 10 to the back, that doesn't sound so hard.

Doing it with SimPE is a bit hit and miss for me tbh because you need to know the orientation of your hood if you're doing it straight and I've spun Little Carping around so much I have absolutely no idea where north is.

Doing it by relative position is easier but I still make mistakes and send the lot the wrong way (close down, open SimPE, do it again). What is handy with SimPE though is using neighbouring lots or dummy lots to get the measurements. It's especially useful with the height function (the Z variable) when you're layering lots (also a fixing point in SimPE for those pesky sinking apartment sub lots folks - was that fixed in a patch? It happened again in Polgannon). Anyway, see pic.

If you're moving a lot a small distance, the Lot Adjuster is, by far, the easiest tool to use and I would almost always recommend getting your lot in the right orientation as close as possible to where you want it to be and using the Adjuster to nudge it into place. If you're moving a long way because there's nowhere you can put your lot near the place you want the lot to be, a technique that sometimes works well is this: get your lot in the right orientation somewhere on the map, then put a dummy lot in place where you want it to go - I use those 1x1 lots for this sort of thing because they'll often fit in a space where the game won't allow a bigger lot. Exit the game, open SimPE, look at and note the x, y and z values for the dummy lot. Restart the game, delete the dummy. Exit the game and fire up SimPE. Use the noted values on the lot you want to shift. This should put it in the place the dummy was - even if it isn't quite there, you can use the Adjuster now to nudge it into place. Much more of a fiddle and only really useful when you have a specific problem with getting close to where you want to be. I've done that but only a couple of times. Having said that, if there's a mismatch in the heights between neighbouring lots, you can adjust the Z value to either match or be slightly above or below so that you avoid tears. Having said all that, this all needs to be flat lots on level terrain or you have no chance of avoiding tears. Sometimes it's not worth the candle and a rebuild on an empty lot is the only feasible option.

Also, there are a number of things in that section of SimPE that are fun to play with. (I didn't say that - try them and you're on your own (back up first)).


Yes, just add to the back if you want more room out back. Like most of Moo's things, it does exactly what it says - there's aren't any fiddles as a general rule. What you're describing - the technique - is the one you use when you want to shift the position of the house on the lot - move it back from the road (thereby adding a front garden). As Gummilutt says, you have to do it in multiples of 10 and moving a building about on the space you have takes a fairly strong spatial imagination but is also not required if you are just adding space (a bit like buying the plot next door for instance).

No, you can add to whichever side you want, as long as the total added is 10 (or rather, equal 10s). You could do 3 on one side and 7 on the other, or subtract 3 in front and add 13 in the back. As long as it's 10 total, and nothing is blocking, you're good to go.

I tried moving the church one to the side and back, to see if it would also suddenly magically be placeable in the same spot, but no. But eh, at least all the lots I wanted in one place are in place

Slight strange thing with Lot Adjuster.
I open it up and see my list of hoods as normal, so I click open Middleground which is the sub hood containing the lot I want to change, except it shows me lots from another sub hood, and when I open that sub hood it shows me hobby lots and when I open the uni it shows me my main hood lots, every one I open is showing me lots from a different sub hood. I made a backup up of course and found the lot and enlarged it. I'm going to load up soon and see if it went okay, but is that something that can happen? Lot Adjuster mixes up which sub hood has which lots.

That is odd and I don't understand it. It shouldn't be like that. It should be obvious.