I'm making a town for myself, and have it seemingly most of the way done at least in terms of essentials.

However, there are two somewhat related problems with it:

1) All areas not covered by something I placed are designated by the terrain tool as unpassable by sims, regardless of altitude. Obviously, there's a major problem there when it comes to sims visiting neighbors and the like; but even getting to and from cars could be a problem, because:

2) My lots aren't placed right up against the streets. I intentionally left a grace area, because I'd have driven myself crazy had I tried to get the lots exactly against, yet not overlapping, the sidewalks. I thought the "conform edges" tool, if I have the name right, would put the lots where they needed to be, and I was going to go through when I was done and flatten and conform edges for each lot.

I can't imagine manually going through and getting each lot perfectly aligned with the edge of the sidewalk. Will the game break or look ugly if they aren't?

Any suggestions on either front would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

The worst thing that happens if the lots aren't right up against the sidewalk is that you can't make a path that goes all the way from the front door to the sidewalk in-game. THere are a couple of EA lots that have this problem already. I don't like it, but it's not really severe

As for your first problem, though, that sounds like a bug. You can paint your own unpassable areas, you don't have to accept the auto-routing thing; have you tried that? It is CERTAINLY not normal to have everything be unroutable, and that would make a pretty unplayable town, I'd think.

I'm wondering where the bug is and what I can do about it.

I wish I could paint areas (or the entire town) as routable rather than the ability I've seen to paint areas as unroutable, except where any altitude changes, or the presence of water, prevent it.

For what it's worth, the ground in the unroutable areas looks grassy from a distance but is reflective and moves slowly as if it were very muddy when looked at close up. The ground on the lots I've placed looks normal.

I'm hoping the game will recognize it as routable, but worry that it won't.

I suppose that since the terrain has its own layer, while my roads and lots are on a layer above it, that I may not be totally wasting my time if the base layer is bugged, as I think it would be possible to export "Layer 1" (with the roads and lots) to another file.

If this helps anyone I'm using the medium size "flat" (when one gets it) lot at 200 elevation and the lowest (100) elevation disparity.

Well, I would certainly export it and test it, to see what happens in-game.

Seems that a lot of people aren't exporting and testing their worlds until they're "done"... which is a certain recipe for nasty surprises!

If you turn on the grid mode when placing your roads and lots, you can get them right snug up against each other without fiddling.