I've always wondered if it's possible to wipe out all sims and buildings in a premade town, leaving empty lots, neighbourhood accenting (eg. plants) and rabbitholes.

Premise? It mainly comes down to the sims. I'm never happy with how the premade sims look or progress. I've recently tried editing sims in the world I was in to look how I wanted, but it just isn't the same. I can't reach everyone and I feel a lack of control over genetics and the advancement of my town. Then again, it could be due to Woohooer/Story Progression making my sims breed like rabbits that I lose track of how many sims I have left to edit. But, anyways.

I'm really thinking that there should be a way to start off with a clean EA world free of buildings and sims. The best end result would be just empty lots, rabbit holes, and the general vegetation of the town to be left.

I can think of a couple ways to do this. One, using "Edit in Town" to bulldoze lots and remove sims. Two, using CAW in some sort of manner to create an empty copy of an EA world. I've looked at this tutorial for a solution as well, and I'm honestly up for anything. CAW, S3PE, you name it.

I'm just a bit worried with the nitty gritty of actually doing this task. The easy way would be to bulldoze lots and delete families (whether it be through "Edit in Town" or Total Annihilation, as suggested in the above tutorial). However, I don't want any data left behind that could corrupt my save game, and various threads discussing similar topics stress that sims really shouldn't be deleted using any method in game.
I've just recently let go of a large, multi-part save game that got corrupted beyond repair because of stupid mistakes and I'm really paranoid.

That's why I was thinking using CAW could be a good idea. Making a copy of the world without sims or buildings could reduce the risk of leftover data, or dispell it completely. However, if there is a way to do it safely in game, I'm all ears.

I plan to make my own sims and download residential/community lots to put in. This way the town can look the way I desire, as well as be a certain size.

So, is there a way I can safely remove sims and buildings from a premade EA town in order to leave it clean, with rabbitholes, empty lots and vegetation remaining? Can I do this in-game or in CAW? If so, how?

I highly appreciate any contributions, advice or help in advance.

Thanks!

PS. I'd really like to stress the safety of it all. I could take any of these methods to do what I want to do but to the extent in which I am editing and using the world I had in mind, I really don't want some corrupt data of missing/deleted sims or lots to ruin it.

Take a look in the downloads section on this site: http://modthesims.info/browse.php?f=151&showType=2&gs=2

Ah, I see exactly what I'm looking for! However, I'd like to take a CAW approach now that I've done some more research. I've found the lite file of the world I like, but completely emptied and unpopulated, with only empty lots left. I'd still like for the town to have rabbitholes and some of the community lots present in the original world. Would it be safe to open up the original world in game, save the rabbit hole and community lots to the bin and then re-place them on the emptied world in CAW? Will this be okay to do, leaving no data behind? I'm not going to touch the cemetary present in the world as I have heard bad things about messing with ghosts and incomplete sim data in CAW.

You could probably delete the sims using NRaas mods in EIG.

The lots can be deleted easily in CAW by moving them all to the same layer, and deleting the layer.

Deleting the Global Layer would also be a good idea.