Leaving this here in the off chance it's useful to anybody. A kind person in another forum gave me a direct link to another version of CAW, which downloaded properly and seems to be operating well. So maybe it was just corrupt copies of CAW lingering all over the place.
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I've tried a lot of things with this so this may be a long post.
I've just gotten around to installing CAW on my computer, which is a Windows 10 machine: I'm happy to provide all the specs if they'll be useful. I'm a little low on RAM, but I thought that CAW would need less of it than The Sims full game, and I could mess around with it while I'm waiting for my new RAM to arrive.

First bad sign: the EA download site is broken. So I found it on those kinds of sites that slap other people's free downloads up. Plural, yes, because I have installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled versions from 3 different sites. I was careful to match versions: I have 1.69 and I downloaded the 1.69 version (I know this doesn't usually matter but if EA bothered to make 2 versions maybe it does matter, so I took care).

Once installed, CAW does not run. Clicking on it results in an instantaneous flash of the splash screen, followed by nothing. The task manager confirms this: CAW appears as an item in the list for a tiny moment, and then disappears. On a few occasions this is accompanied by an error message saying CAW can't run while the game is open, but of course task manager confirms that no game files of any kind were open during the attempt to open CAW. On two occasions, Origin did appear in the task manager after the crash, but not before or during the attempt to open CAW.

I ran dxdiag, and it showed a problem having to do with CAW and the SuperCAW patch, which as far as I understand, does exist as a file on my machine but is not installed, though I'm pretty sure I don't know all the places to check to see if it has been installed behind my back.

Here are the errors dxdiag listed:


Windows Error Reporting:
+++ WER0 +++:
Fault bucket 1275927632469207420, type 5
Event Name: AppHangB1
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: CAW.exe
P2: 1.0.3631.38448
P3: 4b21dddb
P4: 2d68
P5: 134217728
P6:
P7:
P8:
P9:
P10:


+++ WER1 +++:
Fault bucket 1432427918981333367, type 1
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: WorldBuilderCS.exe
P2: 0.0.0.0
P3: 527eb905
P4: KERNELBASE.dll
P5: 6.2.19041.804
P6: b610d74d
P7: e0434f4d
P8: 0012a8b2
P9:
P10:


+++ WER2 +++:
Fault bucket 1432427918981333367, type 1
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: WorldBuilderCS.exe
P2: 0.0.0.0
P3: 527eb905
P4: KERNELBASE.dll
P5: 6.2.19041.804
P6: b610d74d
P7: e0434f4d
P8: 0012a8b2
P9:
P10:

A cursory examination of the program files shows a seemingly complete CAW folder (but I don't know what's supposed to be in there) and no trace of the superCAW files that dxdiag is talking about. I went looking so I could uninstall it but I can only find the download, in the downloads folder. I have really looked all over for this. I suppose I should remove every vestige of it from the downloads folder too?

An attempt to run CAW "as administrator"--right click, choose "run as administrator"--results in the install/uninstall dialog "do you want this program to make changes to your computer?" Both the Yes and No answers result in the splash screen disappearing, the filename disappearing from task manager, and nothing.

The other thing I notice is that there's cache files in the CAW documents folder. I didn't remove them yet.

I did try removing the mods folder from the Sims documents folder and it made no difference.

So anyway those are all my observations and I'm hoping somebody can find what my error is.

For CAW it does matter which version you install. Also you will have to start the programm with admin rights every time. Also you do have to have CAW installed and running properly before you can use SuperCAW.

The direct downloads fot the CAW tool on the Sims 3 site still work.

For patch 1.67-
http://lvlt.thesims3.com//content/g...w/worldtool.exe

For patch 1.69:
http://lvlt.thesims3.com//content/g.../caw/ts3caw.exe