Hello. I have this desire to make my own cities and towns in The Sims. What I mean is making my own lots + Sims. Ideally I would create something from scratch using CAW, but it takes even longer and must be difficult.

The Sims 1 and 2 allowed you to start with a blank slate without much fuss, and in the case of TS2 you could even generate vacation destinations and universities by choosing a preset. Nowadays I am more interested in TS3, but it doesn't have the same neighbourhood creation tool. I'm not discrediting CAW, but TS2 made it simple to create a blank neighbourhood, as you could simply choose a template.

I downloaded unpopulated files from CAWster, but the WA ones still have the lots and that's not exactly what I want at the moment. I also don't know if exporting these files will work out for me, I tried once and got an error I don't recall.
So I'm thinking about downloading a custom empty world and turning it into a vacation spot. Maybe I could do the same for the university.

What is the best way to go about this? I looked around and saw that you need to add the resources to the .world files.
Does that work okay? I read conflicting reports on this. There are people who had annoying glitches and I'm scared of having a similar experience.

I don't care much for tombs and adventuring, I'd just like to make normal community lots to hang out in, like for example, a cafe or a pizzeria.
Would I have to rename the custom world files to their standard names such as Egypt, China and France? Is there a way to at least change the name in-game, to pretend my Sim was visiting a different country?
Example: I grab a world from the internet and decorate it so it looks like Tokyo. Can I rename it to "Japan" somehow AND still keep it as a default?

Regarding University, it would actually be my first time playing with the expansion. I don't mind missing out on minor features, but I'd rather not deal with major bugs during gameplay. Apparently the meet 'n' greet doesn't show up when you turn a world into university. Would classes and lectures still work, provided I placed essential items in the lots?

And as you may have noticed, I'm not knowledgeable about CAW at all. Last time I tried using it was in 2010. However, I can check out guides and tutorials if necessary.

Keep in mind that this will be for personal use.
Thanks for reading!

If you use Nraas Traveler, then you can visit any world as a vacation destination. You don't need to do anything special to it.
https://www.nraas.net/community/Traveler
You only need to import bits of code if you want the world to behave like the WA destinations- such as the locals' names, vendors, mode of trtansport.

In addition to the above, something you can do to have blank versions of a neighbourhood on hand is to simply keep a save backup somewhere to use every time you want to use the edited version of a world. Especially when it's for personal use, no harm in doing things a little less fancy and non-default!

By that I mean, start a new save and skip right to Edit Town, then bulldoze all the lots. Save, and name it something like WorldName_Empty.
Every time you want to use that blank world, simply load this save and make sure to Save As after playing to never overwrite it.

If you ever want to visit a world you edited as a vacation destination, you can copy the .nhd file from the save it's in and paste it in the save you'll be visiting it with. Using NRaas Traveler above, when you visit that world for the first time it'll load from the edited .nhd.

As for custom universities, I've seen very mixed results for those from others but cannot speak to it myself. I'd err on the side of caution- maybe play a bit of EA's original world to get an idea of how it should work normally? You can use the same mod as above to create homeworld universities, which are a little more stable than trying to replace the world entirely iirc.

Thanks guys. I thought about making a blank save but I wondered if there was another way. And I'll take a look at Traveler for sure.
I'll also have to test the university since I never played that expansion before. I heard that people are replacing the default university with custom ones and I wondered how that was. I wanted to do the same and also make my own blank vacation spot (either emptying out the default locations or choosing another world).

Do you guys think that Traveler + blank save are better options than replacing the .world entirely to make a default?

This is not related to CAW, but is there a way to stop the generation of townies (except for service Sims)? Something like notownieregen but for TS3.

I'd definitely say Traveler and shuffling the .nhd files around would more than cover what you're looking for. Replacing an existing WA destination is not only a lot more convoluted work, but has the added weirdness of using EA's custom demographics and tourists and such for whatever the original was.

As for townies, they can be reduced but not outright stopped.
For some basic control, you can use NRaas Register to disallow immigrants (sims spawned for purpose ie. townies) from filling role sim jobs (that's things like tending registers, stylists, bartenders, etc) and lower the pool size for service sims so there are fewer of them too.
The version of NRaas Careers in testing right now also allows you to change the min/max coworkers of each career while ingame, as the minimums are forced to be filled with townies. You could also make your own tuning mod for this.

Greater control would require using the above in combination with NRaas StoryProgression, but that's a much larger and far-reaching mod that may be a little intimidating to use as a solution to one small issue. The general idea is that EA's default story progression revolves around the active family and makes some severe decisions around spawning sims and culling them to keep the world moving- disabling it and using a modded SP being the only way around this. By default, NRaas SP will prevent townies filling empty homes as well as protect existing inactive sims from deletion.
It has many many other features, but there is full documentation at the website and you're always welcome to ask questions over there. It's quite active, so one of the admins or other volunteers (including myself) will be able to answer anything you're curious about.

Thank you for the response
If I haven't started a new save yet, do I need to mess with the .nhd files?
I'll probably just reduce the amount of townies then.

The .nhd part is how you visit the version of a world from one save in another, so you only need to do that when you're ready.

For example, I start Save A in Bridgeport and make a bunch of edits to the lots and sims there.
Then I copy Bridgeport_0x09ffe3d7.nhd from that save's folder and paste it in Save B's folder.
When the family in Save B travel to Bridgeport via Traveler for the first time, it will have all of the edits I made.

Thank you for the answer again! I appreciate it. I'm happy that there is at least a way to do this kind of thing, even if it isn't 100% like what I expected.