I'm very happy that we have collections back with Pets, and I spent quite a lot time to organize my thousands of CC into collections. New CC keeps poping up every day so it's obvious that I will have a lot of new CC installed and need to be organized from time to time.

Now I'm facing a big problem here. With so many CC in my game, its really hard to find those new ones I just installed. I cannot go through the entire list for each category to find them, it's really hurting my eyes. I remember back to Sims 2, what I did is I kept 2 downloads folders, one for the already organized CC and one for the new CC. I change the folders name so only one will show up in my game. But it seems I cannot use the same trick for Sims 3. I tried to move the folder DCBackup to a non-sims folder, but the objects still show up in the game. I think I also tried to play with the DCCatch folder but doesn't work either. Of course I can uninstall everything and install them back, but it's just too time consuming.

So I'm tring to see any suggestions my fellow simmers can provide? Is there a quick way to "hide" my old CC? Thanks for your help!

I'd call my amount of CC moderate -- not huge, but large enough that I neither want to leave it all enabled all the time, nor set up the .package files individually for different games scenarios.

I keep many subdirectories of Mods/Packages and copy all the packages from a subdirectory into the (real, top-level) Mods/Packages directory. Removing the .package files from Mods/Packages removes them from the game.

That removal step sounds similar to what you say doesn't work for you, right? I think it's all about that directory. Caches might also need clearing in some cases, but Mods/Packages is really the place that a package has to be or not be.

One nuisance in that approach is that it requires me to keep multiple copies of packages that I use in more than one scenario. When I update a package (e.g. to work with a new game patch), I have to update all the copies. So far, my amount of CC is small enough that I can do that manually, although with some grumbling.

If I were harder-core of a geek than I am, I would automate a scheme to keep bills-of-materials for each of the scenarios that I now use subdirectories for, so I'd only need to keep track of one copy each package -- and, it would keep that one copy somewhere that I wouldn't accidentally remove when changing scenarios. This auto-magical CC management tool would also remember which saved games had been saved with which CC installed, and would copy the right CC into Mods/Packages when I tried to run the saved game -- after I clicked on the saved game, but before it borked itself by trying to load up without the CC.

Thanks for the reply Ronnie. I forgot to mention that most of my downloads are in sims3pack format (I prefer that because I can see the preview in the launcher). After I install them, the package files don't go into Mod folder. I remember reading somewhere that they are converted into .package files and put in DCBackup, and I do see lots of package files there after my installation. Weird though, when I remove that folder, those CC still show up in the game!

Strange, once I cleaned the DCBackup folder and lots of my C was gone, I had to reinstall it.

Anyway, back to your question: collections are back and it is good as we can now organize the CC better. I usually go through all the categories and find all the items for sets, so that I have sets collections. The rule is different for the Decor/Misc. category, as it contains a lot of stuff, and I made the following collections to organize it (as looking for a specific pillow, pile of books, or bottle of perfume was a real pain in the ass before that). : Cosmetics, Laundry, Housework and Gardening, Pillows and rugs (concerns those of them that don't show up in Rugs category), food, Sculptures, Surface Clutter, Deco Furniture (some cabinets, shelves, etc. also go there somehow, they're wrongly classified), Office Stuff, Signs, Fountains. It took me 4 hours to organize that damn Deco?misc category into collections, but at least now it is quicker to find stuff there.

Here's how I keep track of all my CC, I've been doing this (or something similar) since I started using CC back in Sims 1. (by the time Sims 3 was released, I had close to 10 gb of Sims 2 CC)

I have a folder called Custom Content Storage in my C:\Users|My Documents\Electronic Arts folder with submenus for every kind of CC imaginable. Objects,(which has subfolders divided by room like the Buy Mode ingame), Clothing (subdivided by gender and age) Sims, Build Objects, Hacks, Careers, Cars. etc. I keep all my zip and rar files in there. I also have a folder just for Sim3paks. I don't bother to keep the numbered archives from TSR and I don't bother to separate them by category. I have a folder called "New" which is where all my recent downloads go. In this folder I unpack all my package files and copy them to the appropriate Sims3/mods folder.
Once the archive is unpacked, I move it to the appropriate storage folder. All Sims3paks are copied to the game downloads folder. I use Directory Opus as my Windows Explorer replacement. It has multiple panes making copying and moving files between different areas of the hard drive simple.

My Sims 3/Mods/Package folder, is subdivided identically to my storage folder except for the "new" folder. As I write this, I realize that sometimes I install new CC and if it causes a problem I have to search all the different folders. So, now I'm going to create a "New" folder in my "Mods/Packages" folder. Duh. If, after installing new packages, I have a problem, I'll know where the potential culprits are. I'm not sure what depth of parent/child folder system is allowed in the Mods folder, but I've been 5 deep and it works so I'm pretty sure almost any depth is allowed up the Windows maximum filename character limitation of 255. Also, In my Sims 3 game folder, I have a folder called "Installed Sims3paks." After I use Launcher to install all my Sims3Paks, I move them to this folder. This lets me know quickly which Sim3pak items are installed since not everything shows up in the Installed Content on Launcher.
Granted, there is a certain amount of redundancy, but when you have multiple GB's of content, knowing where to find a specific item is very helpful. I even have my ../mods/packages/hacks folder subdivided into "Updated for Pets" and "Pre-Pets."

I've automatically gone thru all my package files and Installed content files and deleted any furniture I could find created before late October, 2011. By checking my "Installed Sims3Pak" folder I was able to determine the creation date of my "Installed Content" items making removing them easier.


Taoyingying, I think, when you delete the DCCache folder, you also have to delete the 4 cache files and DCBackup. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Sims3Packs are installed to the DCCache folder; that folder contains merged package files. There is one file for store content and one for user content; when they reach a certain size, another is created. If you remove the DCCache folder, all of your installed Sims3Packs will be uninstalled.

The DCBackup contains the individual packages that were in the Sims3Packs, that were bundled together to create the DCCache files. Effectively they are a duplicate and are not needed for your content to show in the game; however they are needed if you wish to have Sims3Pack content included when you package a world/ sim/ lot. If you remove the DCBackup folder, your custom content will still show up in game, but any content you use in a lot/ sim/ world will not be packaged with it.

The other cache files are explained here:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...1_Refresh_cache

If you want something a bit easier than doing it all by hand... the best, and, well, really the ONLY tool available for managing TS3 CC is Granthes's Custom Launcher. The original version can be found here at MTS; it manages .package files only and focuses on automatically combining them into large packages for better performance.

The second version (now called CC Magic) has been in beta for almost a year, and is near release. It handles Sims3packs as well as packages, it also handles "legacy" mods that you don't want combined in big packages for one reason or another, it lets you arrange your CC in sets, it lets you manage your collections and associate them with sets, enable and disable CC items individually or by set, and... a few more things The Configurations feature supports exactly the issue Ms. DeNoube mentions... lets you specify which CC you want to load together for particular games (without requiring you to keep multiple copies of that CC).

You can find it here: http://sims3.the-prof.net/forums/in...aobvpcedjqsqtb5 ; it's just now getting the final touch of polish, and will be submitted to MTS soon.

I've been using it for some time. It has among other things a powerful filtering feature that lets you filter your CC by all kinds of data (which helps with finding things you've lost), and is great for organizing your mods BOTH thematically AND by features like EP compatibility.

Last edited by Srikandi : 23rd Nov 2011 at 2:53 AM.

Thank you folks so much! I will try with each of your suggestions :D
My game becomes quite lagging after pets installed. When zoom out to town view and zoom back in, it takes couple of seconds before all textures show up (before that they are all grey mesh). I guess possibly its time for a clean up. Can't wait for that CC Magic tool to be released! ^o^

taoyingying,

Use the custom launcher that Srikandi mentioned to help with the lag. It merges all the files up to 1GB to make the game run much faster. It also organizes the content for you and you can make sets so you can find what you've downloaded.

CC magic released today on Granthes's site: http://sims3.the-prof.net/2011/11/cc-magic-is-released/ . Will be submitted here if there are no installation issues reported

Great news! I really got lucky asking for something yesterday and got it delivered today. Even Santa is not that efficient XD
Thanks for the head up Srikandi! I will try it out once done with work