My primary neighborhood is Strangetown and I've just started Pleasantview, but I don't want to use up more computer space by creating a whole new Downtown. Is there any programs or mods that will let me use a downtown area for multiple neighborhoods?

I'd also like to import my custom families from Strangetown into other places.

What you can do is download subhood versions of the premade hoods (The state of the art can be found here: http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html) and attach them to your Strangetown and/or Pleasantview, and the playables in those subhoods will all be able to interact with each other and your custom families. People do this quite a lot. This will create one "megahood" which will exist completely independently of all other neighborhoods, and will all be accessed through the main hood on the main menu. You could make a Strangetown megahood with Pleasantview, Downtown, and SSU attached, and a Pleasantview megahood with ALT and Strangetown attached; but you cannot connect existing Strangetown to existing Pleasantview.

To import your custom families from Strangetown into the existing Pleasantview, you would need to clone them with SimPE and Bodyshop, recreate them in CAS, and load them as new families. (See here: http://simpeforum.ambertation.de/si...you-clone-a-Sim) You can use tools like SimPE, SimBlender, the testingcheats, and so on to make the clones match the relationships and skills of your fully-developed custom sims, if you like.

Existing in-game tools for moving sims between neighborhoods should not be used, as they create massive game corruption which will eventually make your game unplayable. A certain amount of game corruption is likely to accumulate during the normal course of play and need to be cleaned up as you go; but this would be a lot like transplanting a tree by chopping it down and standing it up again without any roots. So don't use them.

This sounds very complicated. Will the mod move the NPCs and pre-set decorations into the new hood and will the terrain completely change? Haven't played any of the Sims in Pleasantview, but I did delete two lots.

I created families in Strangetown thinking they'd show up in the family bin for other neighborhoods, I don't intend to move any Sims residing in Strangetown elsewhere.

I don't want to lose everything again like when I incorrectly installed UC for the first time and tried importing data from Double Deluxe/OFB.

If all you want to do is have your custom families in Pleasantview instead of (or as well as) Strangetown, the only way to do it without breaking both neighborhoods is to recreate them in CAS, and the simplest way to do that is to export them in SimPE. If you think you can take good enough notes to recreate them in CAS without using SimPE, you are certainly free to try that. I couldn't do it; but I do weird things to sim faces that are hard to recreate later.

The rest of it is not complicated once you understand what's happening and how the neighborhoods are structured.

Each neighborhood on your main menu is a separate entity. There is no communication between them. Custom sims created in CAS while you're in Strangetown will only ever appear in the Family bin for Strangetown. If you look at the Family bins of Strangetown and Pleasantview, you will see that they share some families and not others. The Singles and Loner households will only ever appear in Strangetown; the Burb and Oldies families will only ever appear in Pleasantview. Depending on your EPs, you might have Traveller, Ottomas, Newson, Goodie, Cooke, Roseland, and Crittur families in all your Family bins; this is because they were created in "stealth hoods" by the programmers, and unless you take steps to block those stealth hoods, they will be added to the Family bin of every neighborhood the first time that neighborhood is loaded.

With Nightlife, University, and Open For Business, it is possible to add different kinds of subhoods to any of the neighborhoods appearing in the main menu. Nightlife enables you to add a downtown, University enables you to add a University, and OFB allows you to add a "shopping district." Since you have a downtown for Strangetown already, you know that you have the option, when you choose Strangetown from the main menu, to go into Downtown, that your Strangetown-dwelling sims can visit there, and that you can switch to downtown from the neighborhood screen in Strangetown, and vice versa. Sims in the Strangetown family bin can move into downtown as easily as Strangetown.

University is a special case in that only young adults can live or go to community lots there, but the player can switch back and forth from the neighborhood screen, and University students can visit downtown or the main hood.

A Shopping District works like a Downtown, except that it does not generate special townies (Mr. Big, Diva, Crumplebottom, etc); and you can add as many as you like/your computer can handle without repercussions. Adding a second downtown has technical consequences that are outside the scope of this discussion. Like Downtown and the Universities, the game comes with a pre-made shopping district which can be added to any main hood, or you can create a custom subhood from inside the main hood. No changes are made to the main neighborhood's terrain, lots, etc., because each subhood is a distinct entity linked to the main hood, like the downtown. If a subhood (like Bluewater Village, the one that ships with the game) contains Family bin sims, they will be in the Family bin in the main hood and Downtown as well as the subhood; because these subhoods are all one big interconnected neighborhood, not separate entities like the neighborhoods in the main menu.

In order to play a megahood, it is necessary, first, to have OFB installed; then, to install the subhood template versions of Pleasantview, Strangetown, etc. to the same location as the template for Bluewater Village, which is found in the Program files, not the My Documents file where your playing neighborhoods are stored. It is also helpful to install a small fix that will make choosing subhoods other than the premade one easier. (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=420924). Installing these subhood templates will make versions of Strangetown, Pleasantview, etc. available to add to other neighborhoods as shopping districts. They are in most respects identical to the main hood versions, though pre-existing corruption has been cleared up, only the townies relevant to the story have been retained (and may have different names), and the prescripted events in the base game neighborhoods will not occur. (So Pascal will still have his baby, but Vidcund has only the normal chance of being abducted.)

Adding a Strangetown shopping district to Pleasantview will in no way, shape, or form affect the Strangetown you access through the main menu.

100% agree ^ with Peni.

I am chiming in as I noticed this line in your post above


Which two lots did you delete. So long as they did not have graves on them you are good to go. Also do you have installed 'No corrupt death" and "No unlink on delete"? When someone mentions deleting lots in Pleasantview I always think of the Goth's and their graveyard.

*thinking aloud* It would be good to have a list of houses and community lots that come with graves.

In Pleasantview there are only 2 3 that have graves on them, Goth and Dreamers. Add Caliente house to the list.

That's it, Dreamers! I don't normally play the pre-made hoods, but I knew there was a second house with graves. The Goth house is so ugly I can easily see someone bulldozering it.

I was wrong, there are 3 lots that have graves on them, the Caliente also have a urn on it of Michael Bachelor.

There is a tutorial somewhere about how to make any hood you create into a custom subhood, either a downtown or a shopping district.

There are two relevant tutorials, both by the late lamented Mootilda:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=420196
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=502306

That one I didn't know as I've never played them except a quick look at them when the game was brand new 10 years ago.