Yes to both. I also combine all my package files. Say I get a dress with a mesh and four recolours, I use SimPE to combine all four files into one. It makes it so much easier and there are no abandoned meshes (plus a lot less files to muddle through. I do the same with hair and multiple recolours of maxis objects etc. I have 735 (probably without combining it would be over 2000) files in 55 folders.
Is there a tutorial somewhere on how to do this? I'm a maniac when it comes to my downloadfolder, and this seems to be the perfect solution for the headaches it gives me sometimes.
I don't think so I just figured out most of it on my own and what I didn't know I asked the creators that I knew would. I can write out a tut this weekend and pm it to you if you can't find something suitable by then.
although probably solved via pm, i might as well add my guess regarding the procedure, so "Search"-function will find something, when others might become interested.
preparations:
- get SimPE (any version should work)
- make backups as needed
- have some space available for the temporary files
procedure:
1. open the mesh-package in SimPE
2. open a recolor-package in another instance of SimPE
3. extract whole content of recolor (CTRL-A -> RMB -> Extract...) to temporary storage
4. add extracted content into mesh (RMD -> Add...)
5. repeat 2.-4. for any further recolor
6. save mesh-package
correct me, if i'm wrong.