More Awesome Than You!

I have a young sim who is a natural artificer/inventor type. She's running a shop where she repairs and sells clocks and watches (among other things). I found her this lovely set of watches that can be placed on surfaces and work as alarm clocks here:
http://linna.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=230227

and I made a collection file with a bunch of other clocks and such. On a community lot, these watches are gray(ish) in the collection file and won't place and can't be found at all in the catalog. On a residential lot, they're under electronics and it's not like there's too many places to hide in there.

I think they need some sort of EP update? I can't use simPE on this computer right now, but I want them bad enough I might stick it on hubby's computer long enough to fix them if it's not too hard and someone can point me to a tutorial. Or if there's some way without simPE, I'd really appreciate the info.

Sagana, you've been here long enough to know that asking for help for a MTS2 object, made by a random creator, on a completely unrelated site is a stupid idea.

Here's a thought, why don't you go ask on MTS2.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/helpdeskwarning.png)

*shrug* because I thought I was asking for help on how one updates objects, but the red is lovely and large and the fire is warm thanks.

This is not a problem with objects that need updating, this is a problem with the object's flagging: It has no community lot availability flags. Therefore, you will not be able to buy it on a community lot unless you modify the OBJD in SimPE. The exact method of what you need to do depends entirely on the object, and we didn't make the object, so it's not our problem.

Alternatively, you can just transport sufficient samples in the sim's inventory and place the objects by removing them from the sim's inventory on arrival.

So it's different for every type of object? pfui. I don't suppose it's the same for all electronics objects or something? Almost all the ones I have that are broken are in electronics. I was hoping for something I could do all in one go, but searching out a new method for every object would probably be more than my husband would appreciate on his computer.

There is no documented, one-way method of doing so. You basically have to do it by reverse-engineering and stealing the commlot flags behaviors from an object you wish to emulate. If Saganas are too stupid/lazy to manage this, just stuff like 50 of the things into the owner's inventory before leaving home and place them on the shelves when you arrive.

You should be able to get the watches in wholesale mode, when the business is up and running. You can only use them as items to sell, though, as they would be automatically flagged for sale.
I know it works for cars and other objects normally not available in community lots.

ETA: there should be a trick or something IIRC for stuff not normally available in community catalog, via collections: e.g. Squinge made the wedding arch available in comm lots in this way when community weddings weren't available, and Frillen did something like that with accessories collection.

I'd thought they just weren't there in the catalog, but maybe I didn't go through the whole thing with wholesale mode on *hates that yellow colored stuff*. I was going to claim broken computer, but I guess I'll have to plead stupid (broken computer, too dumb to fix) *and* lazy. *goes off to try again*. If not, I'll resort to inventory manipulations - I just actually have quite a few objects doing this. They must have either been created before OFB or cloned from objects not available on community lots.

Edit: Baa Marhis, thanks. Triply stupid as it turns out I already knew how to do this. I remembered when I read your edit taking all the buy and community flags off objects so they would just show up in collections and not clutter the buy mode. I was doing that with the Categorizer from SimsWardrobe, so downloaded that (it doesn't need .net and direct X9 so it works fine on my computer) added the community shop and miscellaneous flags, saved and tested. Worked beautifully. My artificer is happily making money building and selling clocks, watches, mechanical birds, mechanical bands, steampunk computers and steampunk harleys. Whee.

I believe that BV finally broke that nice trick for good. >:(

A lot of custom objects which were cloned from base game version lack community lot flag, like beds or dressers.