This is not a big emergency, but just something that irks me. On a community eatery/bar lot, where the servers have access to the kitchen to fetch the cooked food, how does one keep the customers from wandering in and out of there, via the same door? I expect it's my fault for being overzealous in my decorating efforts, and putting attractive nuisance things like actual "refrigerators" in the kitchen (in my medieval games, these are more interesting-looking than a modern fridge, so I'm tempted to use them as decor). Customers will sometimes go for a snack from the fridge, or if there are counters, the neat freaks will sometimes try to give them a scrub. It's probably avoidable if I keep the comm lot kitchens to a bare minimum, right?

Plus, where there is a bar attached to the kitchen, many times the non-controlled Sims will first walk through the kitchen to enter the bartender's area, see if there's a way to sit on that side of the counter, before coming back around to where the seats actually are, even if they've already been shown to a seat by the greeter. You'd think Sims would be programmed to use the shortest route to any given point, but they don't seem to be. I haven't analyzed this too much... do the more "active" personality types try to get an unnecessary number of steps into their daily movements, or what?

For kitchens, I normally use the classic swing door with the round window. Might one of those smart doors work better? If so, which one, and how would I set the prefs on it? I expect there's an specific fix for this in OFB, but I don't yet have that installed (although I do now own it).

Hmm, I'm not sure if a mod specifically addresses this so I would try Pescado's Authorized Personnel Only and see if works on unowned community lots. I'm not sure because I'm unsure if the settings would save on an unowned community lot, but worth a try I think.

There's a thread for it at MATY here if you need the Read Me, but I would look it up in the Hack Directory and get the version for your latest EP.

Basically, Authorized Personnel Only lets you zone spaces and lets you set up rules for whether groups of sims or individuals can enter the room or not. Perfect when the vanilla door lock settings aren't enough or if you wanted to make a secret room and actually keep out npcs, etc.

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I'm not overly concerned about having to set it each time... sort of used to doing that anyway, with the tunaisafish doors in regards to age-limits on certain spaces. I appreciate the suggestion.

Perfect! Of course, the first time I tried it, two random Sims had wandered into the kitchen just in the time it took me to navigate over there to set the prefs. But once the setting takes hold, it works. Thanks again! Now to install it in my historic games... any idea if anyone did a less electronic-looking recolor of it? It's small enough to hide pretty easily, in any case.

@chitownriverscum didn't see your update. I did recently see a re-mesh as light switches by swishbishbosch, but not a medieval/historically appropriate one.

But it should be easy enough to re-mesh yourself! Sunrader and I both have tutorials on it:
Use Sunrader's
Tired of burying your batbox? Change the models of favorite mods easily in SimPE tutorial to change the mesh to another Maxis Object
And mine is How to Change the Mesh/Model of a Mod into a Different Custom Object

Again, I appreciate the suggestions, and generally I love messing with the gears of games whenever possible, but... I'm on a Mac. So no SimPE.

I'll take a look at the light-switch meshes, though. They could be preferable to the current look.

Nice! They're pretty small, and come in all sorts of recolors, so should be easy enough to make them unobtrusive. Thanks again, PK.

Your welcome @chitownriverscum and if you come across a mesh you'd like to turn it into, I'd be happy to give it a try.