Tutorial: How to use Dashboard by Delphy

Hellos.

Here is a tutorial about how to use the Dashboard tool By Delphy from Mod the Sims.

Dashboard is a very handy program. Here is the description by Delphy, cause I can't really say it any better.

The tool has 4 main tasks...

- To easily show you which games you have, whether or not they have a full framework, and to browse to that games root folder.
- To show you the contents of the Sims 3 cache files, and clear them
- To show you all of your custom content in .package format, and display any "corrupted" files, or Sims 2 content, or stuff that just plain wont work.
- To fix any problems with corrupted files, empty files, generally broken files, and allow you to fix conflicts yourself

If you don't have it yet, you can download it here. "How to install" is told in the download page.

OK, let's run the program. Double click on the Sims3Dashboard.exe it looks like this:

When the program is opened it should look like this:

Up on the left are the Sims 3 Games you have.

- There is a 'Yes' under 'Installed' if you have the game installed to your computer, 'No' if you don't have.

- There is a 'Yes' under 'Framework' if you have working framework (that you need for to be able to use mods in package form), 'No' if you don't have.

- The version of each game is told under 'Version'

- By selecting one of the games it gives you download link for framework installer if you don't have framework yet. And pressing 'Open root' button it takes you to the install folder of the game in question.

Up on the right are the Sims 3 Game Caches. They look like this:

As an explanation to what those files are, I borrow the words on one tutorial at MTS:

"Cache files are temporary files that are saved by the game to make loading certain information faster. If these files have incorrect or corrupted data, it may prevent your game from loading. The game will regenerate fresh copies of these files each time it loads, so deleting them is perfectly safe, and it's normal for them to reappear."

There are 2 options how to delete the caches:

- To delete all at once, by pressing 'Clear all'

- To delete only selected, by selecting the ones you want to delete and pressing 'Empty selected'

I normally use 'Clear all'. When you press it, this question will pop up:

"You are about to clear all caches. Are you sure?" 'Yes' 'No' 'Cancel'

- Select 'Yes' if you are, and you should be if you want them emptied.

- Select 'No' or 'Cancel' if you don't.

After you press yes the caches window should look like this:

Then lets look at the lower window. There are shown all the files you have at 'Packages' folder.

- By pressing 'Refresh List' the list refreshes and you can see the current situation with your mods.

As you can see, I had some corrupted files, they are shown in red color.

If there were duplicates of files (2 or more of the exactly same file) they would be shown in yellow color.

If there were any conflicts they would be shown in orange color.

If there were any Sims 2 packages, they would be shown in dark blue color.

After fixing if there were any disabled files, they would be shown in light blue color.

Now, cause I have corrupted files I need to get them fixed, so they won't make my game slow. what you need to do is to press 'Fix All Problems'

A window like this will pop up. (Ignore the finnish, the buttons are 'Yes' and 'No')

- By pressing 'Yes' the program will go through the files and fix/disable the corrupted files.

- By pressing 'No' the program won't do that.

When you press 'Yes' a window similar to this will pop up:

It tells you how many packages are fixed, and how many are disabled.

After fixing is done, the window should look like this. In my pic the files are exactly the same, so you can see it fixed them.

There are 2 buttons I didn't explain yet. 'Filter...' and 'Select...'

- By pressing 'Filter...' you can select which files the program shows on the window, for example, only corrupted files.

- By pressing 'Select...' you can select (check mark) for example, only disabled files.

I think that is all I can tell you about the program. It has helped me so much, so it would be a shame if some one on a need for it didn't use it cause they didn't know how.

-armiel-

Credits:

Thanks for Delphy for making this simple yet so helpful program, and for promision on making this tutorial on my blog.

Delphy has all rights for Dashboard, do not upload it anywhere.

All pictures taken by me (armiel)

p.s. All names of people and programs in bold are links, incase you haven't noticed that yet.