I made a post on my blog, raging about how annoying it is to not be able to place columns off the grid, as I wanted to be able to place a column in the center of a tile. Jools responded with a mock-up of the thing I was building, featuring a few CC-free tricks to simulate this effect with furniture. It was so handy and I thought that a lot of Sim builders over here would appreciate the info.

I just attached the picture of my favorite one, which I think I'll be using for the build I almost rage quit But here's the whole post , with four different objects you can combine with half-walls to create the illusion of a large column centered on one tile.

Hm, wouldn't sims try to use those trash cans occasionally? Or are they smart enough to understand they cannot reach them?

I've been using fence posts from the world fences for similar purposes (they don't have any function as far as sims are concerned); the pedestal is also a cool idea =) -- that won't confuse sims either (I think) .. they cannot use that for anything, can they?

@plasticbox

Yeah, I imagine the most they'd try to do with the pedestal would be to look at it (same with the dish rack, probably). I thought about that with the trash can, but this is for a community lot where I don't think there would even be anything they'd want to throw away. Could be an issue for a residential or camping lot, for example.

Good idea about the fence post too!

I've been using trashcans as chimney pots

That's a good idea too!

I made a non-trashcan trashcan (the CanOFlage with different tuning and stuff): http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=562031 -- if sims try to mess with actual trashcans, maybe one can use that instead. (That trashcan actually looks a lot more like a re-purposed planter to me now than the other way around =P).

Repurposing objects in this manner is not very complex, since it doesn't involve messing with the actual object (like meshing and stuff): copy the original COBJ and OBJD (find it by looking up the in-game name in Origin Games/The Sims 4/Data/Client/Strings_ENG_US.package and then search for the key filtering for COBJ, or make a throwaway clone and delete everything but the COBJ/OBJD), give them a new instance, then change the tuning to object_Sculpture_NoView (ID 0x000000000001ABB7), nullify the rig/rslt and if necessary change the ftpt reference (I used that of a World trashcan). One can also change the name/description hash in the COBJ and give it a custom STBL but that is more cosmetic than necessary. Catalogue sorting is in the COBJ as well.