Build mode panel disappears, can't save game?

[Zenbela]

Thanks Everyone for sharing your experiences, both tragic and successful.
Many Many Thanks, I was able to save and recover my game with suggestions from this site and thread. 
Happy Simming to All!

[CocoEley]

Hello everyone, I don't know if you can help me. I read all the answers to this thread and to this one as well http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=bh7hecnpdakhkpjp7qtsllcm11&topic=1425.25 .

I just started to build my second house today and as soon asI clicked the Buy/Build button the game started playing up not showing the whole bar of options. I thought it was just taking its time, had a coffee, came back and saw the pause button on the top right. I clicked on it and nothing changed, still no bar appearing and no  chances to click on anything else.

As I just finished building a massive house, I tried immediately to go to Edit Town to save everything, but it didn't let me. So I noticed that moving the mouse over the "..." it also says "F5" so I clicked F5. The game started "loading" something, with the dotted, spinning circle. It has been about 15 minutes and still nothing changed.

I tried with F1, F2, F3, F5 again, I tried to open the tab with CTRL+shift+C but it doesnt work.

Can anyone help me or at least tell me if the house previously built is saved?

I don't know if this might help, but after a long time not playing, when today I started the game I've been asked if I wanted to download a patch, and I downloaded it and I'm starting to think it might be connected as I never experienced this issue before.

UPDATE: I thought it was going to be a clever idea so I clicked the Windows button, the desktop appeared, I tried to reload The Sims 3 and an error message appeared saying that the game wasn't working. I closed it and re-opened it and found out that nothing was saved.

I have the feeling I will not be playing with the sims for the next few months ahah

[Cheezey]

@CocoEley

Building glitches and crashes like this thread discusses are a huge pain and I totally understand your frustration.  Once you start seeing issues in the UI panel it is often too late to get out and save, and the game has either already crashed or will before you can get into edit town and save.

The best advice I have is that you switch out to edit town and save often, especially if things start to lag even a slight bit more than normal.

I also keep task manager open (I play in windowed mode) so I can check at a glance how much memory The Sims 3 is using, especially when I'm in build/buy mode or CAS.  On my machine it runs fine until it starts to eat up about 2.9 GB of memory. Once it gets near that, I will save, quit, and reload.  It's annoying and frustrating, but not nearly as much as losing a lot of work in CAS or build mode.

Good luck!

[Emcbean129]

this has happened to me a lot as well. what i do is save more often. for example: finish a room or two, then save. basically after every major renovation, save, especially with large files. for example: if you ever try a collector sim. this would require a big house. and with island paradise comes discovering the islands. i tend to build on those too. also, a resort. that's a large file.