Edit Town

Edit Town is a powerful game mode in The Sims 3, which allows the player to edit and customize the neighborhood in the active saved game file. Edit Town lets the player control many aspects of the neighborhood outside of the currently-active household, including lot assignment, and allows the player to enter Buy mode and Build mode on neighborhood lots, even on community lots. This mode largely takes the place of the Neighborhood menu available in The Sims and The Sims 2. The player can enter the edit town by opening up the options menu in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Switching active households
The player can switch active households, but doing so will kill all the previous household promised wishes and accepted opportunities. An active households can be alleviated by entering the "Change Active Household" mode or by the select tool predecessor, if the edit world was activated from already played household.

Library and clipboard
Homes, venues, housed and homeless households (with or without a home) can be saved as duplicates to the library. Evicted and split Sims will be stored to the clipboard. An item from both storages can be moved/place back in on any applicable lot. Sims stuffed as copies in the library will lose all of their relationship, while those plastered to the clipboard won't.

Tools
Changes to settled households and sited lots are done through the toolbar. Lots that are locked by a cheat cannot be altered through these means. There are four tools available in the control panel.

Clicking on a lot with the select tool displays the essential information about it, and the household (if any) that lives there. On the same window interface, options for the selected lot and households that live are available. Player can move out residents and individual household members, either by merging them to another inhabited household or pinning them to a clipboard for later use. Evicting the whole households provides the choice to clip them either from the lot or with it. Lots in the world can be buy mode and build mode, rezoned, renamed and inscribe with a description. Built and housed lots can be duplicated to the library or be shared directly to exchange in game.

Picking the move tool and choosing a built lot allows the player to relocate the whole lot to a new vacant empty lot. An empty lot inhabited by a household can be resided this way. Targeted lot must be big enough for the selected lot to be put.

The build/buy tool is used to enter a clicked lot straight away into build mode. Buy mode is also available for (re)furnishing the lot.

As the name suggest, bulldozer tool removes everything from the lot, turning it empty. If the lot includes any inhabitants, the player will be inquired to evict them with or without the lot's content.

World Editor
World editor is a special tool, allowing the player to add new empty lots and decoration to the world. Once enabled, more advance camera options will be available and the library will be replaced with the new catalog. In this catalog, lot size presets and decoration is categorized into multiple tabs. Existing decoration can be moved around and deleted by pressing the bottom panel. Decoration can also be deleted or de-selected by hitting the / key.

Trivia

 * If the player owns community lots, this is a good way to renovate for more stars without paying a single Simoleon.
 * In the Edit Town mode, the player can also create a new family and place a copy of it or of existing one from library to world. Later, the player can switch from instantly playing family to control another one using Edit Town.
 * As of patch 1.12, the player can add, delete and move residential lots, community lots and neighborhood decorative objects from the Edit Town menu.