More Awesome Than You!

I came across a new irritation last night. I moved a newly single sim into a blank 2x2 lot with a view to building him something for him to live in. First thing he does is head off to play with some butterflies, aw... cute I think, but now is not the time so I distracted him with meditation by the pavement. Only problem is that the butterlfies are still there and (as I discovered) you can't build on top of them using the terrain tools. An hour or two of meditation later and the damned things are still fluttering about so I resort to deploying some stuck object removers, which delete the 'play with butterflies' social allowing me to build. Is the stuck object remover the only solution to the problem?

That's sort of what the Stuck Object Remover is for, yes.

Why not build the house before moving in sims?

That way you get to package it and save for re-use as well. You can check the price as you go now, so you don't overspend.

One of the biggest advantages for building the lot first, aside from what has been mentioned, is that terrain adjustments and terrain paints are free of charge on unoccupied lots.  Plus, reworking sections that did not turn out quite right does not result in loss of funds when stuff is 'sold back' during redesign.

It could be worse. You could have put a sim family on an empty lot in Seasons, have it rain in the five seconds before you hit pause, and then not be able to place foundation tiles over the puddles from the rain.  ;D

I have read that you can grab the butterflies if you have moveobjects on.

The person who did this said it was very tricky to find just the right spot to click on.  Once she did, she moved them out of the way.

How do you check that, Witch? I didn't know that was something you could check while in build mode and on a lot that you're constructing.

The Lot Debugger already has an option to pzorch accumulated rain puddles, as they can get quite numerous. I once removed over 4000 puddles from the lot.

The icon on the top left of the screen - unless I've just been building community lots lately and it doesn't appear for residential lots...

It is definitely there on all lots that are unoccupied.  The tallying is a little quirky when certain items are deleted, but it works nonetheless.

I tend to build all my houses as one-offs so am as likely to do it with or without sims present. If I know I'm going to want to package a house then I'll do it without but this is rare as lot-building from scratch is something I enjoy. In fact the current awesome building contest is the first time I've ever packaged a lot to share. I'm also not bothered by the cost aspect as that is what familyFunds is for.  ;D

I did consider that moveobjects might be an option for dealing with the butterflies but decided that the stuck object remover would be easier - it just seemed a bit like taking a giant sledgehammer to crack a teeny-weeny little nut. They also weren't stuck, just wrong place wrong time so I was left wondering if there was another simple way.

If the butterflies are an object in objects.package they could be reprogrammed so that Start Live Mode and Stop Live Mode toggle their intersectability.  Or delete themselves.

It's on occupied lots, also, and business lots. I tend to check net house worth because I use Inge's mortgage shrubs. It can be tricky, because the values don't take into account renovations at later dates. I have mansions standing $200 worth ???.