Objects from Inventory turning invisible when placed in house

[SMothma]

Recently I've encountered a problem where an item taken out of a sim's inventory will disappear when I try to place it somewhere in the house.

First it happened with a large space rock that my sim had collected. I set it on the floor (in an attempt to have him analyze it, which is still not showing up as an option for me, I know that's been an issue) and it just disappeared. I couldn't move it or anything, and I pretty much forgot about it until I started rebuilding the house. Now it won't let me put items in that grid square, I just get the "can't intersect other objects" message. If I try to use the sledgehammer it says "floor tile required by object."

Then it happened with a painting - I went to hang it on the wall and it disappeared. It was a legacy portrait that I couldn't replicate so I exited without saving, but if this keeps happening I'm worried about placing anything! I haven't tried placing any other paintings from sims' inventories, since I'm worried about losing them.

Another possibly related issue showed up when I had my teen sim check the mailbox. It had the "get mail" option; he checked it and nothing happened - nothing showed up in the inventory, and no message appeared about what I may have received.

Any suggestions? I'm a bit confused about the patching system - I run my games through Steam, and sometimes it seems like it runs patch updates automatically, but when I go back and read about patch-specific issues, I'm still seeing quite a few of the issues in my game from previous patches.

I noticed someone had posted about running into areas on their lot in which they couldn't build or place items, but they didn't mention it being caused by invisible objects in the way! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Vinyl]

I used to have the same issue with my game, though mainly with items placed on the wall.  The game saw them on the wall, but I didn't.  After a couple of panic moments where a legacy painting got 'lost' I stopped hanging anything sim made (paintings, sketches, photos, etc).  Have you tried saving your game (save as, don't override your main game), quitting Sims 3, and re-loading?  That made my paintings re-appear.  Of course, I then pulled them off the walls and never hung anything again, so it's not much of a solution!

Do make sure you're patched up.  This issue happened to me months ago, back when I also had the photography bug (sims getting stuck taking pictures) and just about every World Adventures bug possible.  With the latest patches the majority of the old bugs are gone, and I'm experiencing the joys of picture taking, tomb raiding, and photo hanging for the first time. 

I know multi-generational family saves can get huge and cause glitches all by themselves, so that's also a possibility (but I don't know of any solution to it). 

If you can't move the rock or old paintings and want to build, you can try using moveobjects on, or some of the other testingcheats commands to try and delete or move the invisible objects.  If you can get to the point where they're visible, even if they can't be interacted with by sims, you might be able to ctrl+shift+left-click the object and choose 'delete' from the radial menu.  The object will be destroyed but building should be possible once it's gone.

Hopefully patching takes care of it, and if that doesn't work I'd strongly suggest you keep all legacy items in your sims inventory until it's over!  Good luck!

[Ricalynn]

Welcome to the forum SMothma!  This is actually a known bug and has been around for a very long time.   It's a reason to never keep things in a Sim's personal inventory long.   It only happens with personal inventories though.   The item itself isn't bugged just the inventory.   

The best thing to do is just move paintings directly from easel to the wall using buy mode.  That way if they disappear you can just hit the undo button.   The second time you place an object usually makes it appear too. 

Always clear your caches and everything in DCBackup but the ccmerged file too when this happens. 

[SMothma]

Thank you both for your suggestions! I'll try using moveobjects on and see if that works. I will definitely get my patches updated, too.

I've never made it past the second generation in any of my legacy games, so I don't think it would be the size of the game file. And I try to remember to clear the caches every time but I forget way too often!

That's rather frustrating that the inventory is so bugged.

Thanks again, I'll post an update if it works!

[sone]

Sorry to revive such an old topic.  I found this while trying to find a solution to make a certificate visible again, and have a fix, at least for anything placed on a wall.  make a new piece of wall, and place the invisible object.  Go into build mode, use the sledgehammer to delete the wall.  You shroud receive the amount of money for wall + object.  Then hit undo, and the objects will be visible again.