I know how to with s3pe, but how do I categorize them? I have looked for an answer for the past few days, but the closest I can find to what I am looking for is conflicting advice suggesting sorting by age and gender, separating buy mode objects from build mode ones, and that intended age of some cc doesn't matter as long as it's type, merging skins is ok, that merging skin isn't, and a bunch of other conflicting advice. The only thing I have found that everyone agrees on is don't merge mods and animations. So I have looked for the answer before posting. I am also wondering if there is anything else I should do or know before I do this. Thank you!

I can't answer all of your questions, but hopefully I can help you with a few of them. All of this is just based on my personal experiences and preferences, there are many ways to go about it. The first thing I would do is to keep a backup of all the individual files that you end up merging. I already had about 7 gigs of merged cc when I decided that would be a good idea and was too lazy to later track it all down again. If you ever want or need to remove an item from merged packages ( or to recategorize , say clothes, shoes and accessories for example) it's a much easier if you have those individual packages on hand. Here are two threads where I recently helped people go through what I faced a few years ago. http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=590426 and http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=590849 . It would have been much easier to solve my problem if I had backups of the loose packages.

I do sort and merge by age and gender for clothing and hair, but I've seen nothing to make me think that's needed at all. It's just convenient for me. I merge all my skintones, (other than the default... that goes without saying for any other defaults as well, eyes etc.) Never a problem with that and I have a lot of skintones, 2.59 gigs merged into 11 packages. I don't merge buy and build, but again that's preference not something that's needed in my experience. Pretty much everything from ATS conflicts with pretty much everything from ATS, so I keep a separate ATS Buy.package as well. Some of Cyclone Sue's stuff conflicts with other Cyclone Sue stuff in build, so I have a regular Build.package and a Cyclone Sue build.package.

I initially kept merged packages under 200 megs, then relaxed that to the 250ish meg range. I've seen one poster on here ( and i don't recall who, but it's someone I trust for game knowledge/common sense from other posts of theirs that I'd seen) that merges up to either 400 or 500 megs per package. I haven't tried that yet, but I fully intend to when I quit being lazy. I don't merge mods or animations either, but I do merge several things that most people don't. I merge sliders, but only by creator. For example, I'll merge Jonha's sliders together, but I won't mix/merge them with Delphy's ( which are also merged). I merge patterns, but I keep backups of those in case I hit the dreaded materializing materials error, which I never have. Patterns created with the CAP tool cause problems , avoid those for merging. I've had no problem converting other patterns ( both package files and Sims3packs before I change them) into a merged package. I've read repeatedly that merging counters is a no no, so I don't merge them. Evidently they won't combine to make the corner L shape anymore... or so I've read... so I keep the dozen or so counters I have separate as well.

As far as dividing/naming stuff, that's really up to you. In my current game i have 17.1 gigs of cc merged into 547 packages and I have 24 main folders and 117 subfolders keeping that semi organized. It would be a bit smaller (probably and usually around 500 packages) , but I have a testing folder with 50-60ish things that I haven't merged in yet. I'm really happy merging packages , for both game performance and organization, I wouldn't do it any other way. I just wish I'd saved all the individual packages for convenience down the road. If you ever have a problem (like one of the threads I linked to) it's much easier to fix. Even if you just want to change an outfit's category so it can be worn as career or enable earrings or bracelets for teens ( It seems the vast majority of accessories that aren't enabled for teens could be and will look and work fine) it would be easier to have those on hand. These days I recat/enable everything before I merge and of course, run it all through dashboard, which isn't foolproof, but is damn handy.

Thank you so much, you have no idea. I will be sure to share this with anyone who might need help with this in the future :D

My pleasure, glad I could help. Hopefully you'll get some other players to chime in with their methods and experiences as well.

If you're talking cc clothing and wanting to recategorize items such as sleepwear, formal, swim, etc. Open your items (individually BEFORE MERGING) Click CASP, then Name, then Tag, then click Grid. A box will open and you can reset categories that way. You can fix ages. Also, you can fiz the arrangement of accessories. If you have a headband or hat categorized as earrings, you can re-categorize where you wnat it so that you can use accessories the way you want. You can also recategorize some clothing itmes to Acc and some acc garments to pants. Hope this helps. (I also think some of this works with objects, but don't quote me on that. I haven't had to deal with that yet. I am just now getting used to and fixing CC clothing and hair where/how I want it in my game.)

^ I didn't know that about changing some clothing types to accessories. I'll have to give it a try!

"^ I didn't know that about changing some clothing types to accessories. I'll have to give it a try! "

I am not going to advise to do it for everything. For the most part, the few items i have done it with are leggings/tights, tanktops/undergarments for layering. I have nothing for editing and meshing and making clothes so, if i change something to acc and it doesn't work right i just change it back.

I use a lot of layering for modesty.

Sorry to post here off-topic, but I need help badly getting a default skin replacement to work with a .package file and I would love to create a new thread for this issue but the forum isn't letting me post one. Can someone please help me?

I have merge any of my cc and I have categorize them in the following method. Maybe this helps. Know that is hard to categorize cc for genders, it's much easier to use cc categories. What I mean is make a Folder under mods\packages and name it for example CCDatabase. Under this folder make Accessories, Hair, Clothes, Objects, Lots, SimPackages. Copy this structure also to any other folder, e.g. desktop and forget the one in your mods for the moment. Extract any of your packages to any sub folder under the desktop\CCDatabase, e.g desktop\CCDatabase\Accessories. Copy those packages to the rest sub folders (Hair, Clothes, Objects, Lots, SimPackages) Now use Sims3Dashboard and select each folder suppurate. Dashboard has a column with CC description. What ever is Makeup, lipstick, gloves, earrings etc is Accessory. If you do this in the Accessories Folder leave only those and click (check mark) anything else, one by one. When it's done click disable. Go to the Accessories folder now and delete any file that has the extension Disabled. Open one package in this folder with S3PE and click file->new. Then click Resource ->Import -> As dbc, navigate to the Accessories folder and select all (Ctrl+A) and name this merged file Accessories01.package. Move this file to your mods\packages\CCDatabase\Accessories and don't forget to put the all packages that you used in a zip or rar file in case you need to recreate it. Repeat for the rest. Don't forget the the merged files must not be larger than 350 Mb.

I now 'merge' with CC magic lol. That way I can make as many categories as I want. What I merge manually with S3PE is very few stuff, like mods - specially since now that the game will never get another patch and mods don't get updated. Some CC food that refused to be handled by CC magic. Also Overrides - like those badly needed recategorizations which I generally do myself, It's not complicated extracting the CASP and such.

My advice for which way is better is to go by type, that way you can easily know what's in there and can redo the merged package if you need to. A very good organization with keeping copies is needed. I have a 'full mirror archives' of what is installed, containing all the infos, pics, links, files. It's organized by type (Hairs, Build, Shoes, MakeUp, Clothes, Objects, Mods, Default, Override etc) so when I do a spring cleaning I actually browse my mirror archives to find everything I'll remove, gather them in a separate folder, launch CC magic and remove them. Or redo the merged packages if the removed stuff was there. Then I either delete the removed archives or put them in a huge folder containing the gazillion stuff I downloaded. All classified too, as you can imagine, but it's still a huge dumpster containing millions of stuff