A few LE questions

[getdown11]

Ok so I have decided to give the LE a try.  What can I say.  Badsim's MD Antigone has inspired me to try my hand at it.  But, first I have a few questions.

First, prop families.  When I go to prop families and pick one all the props displayed on the right are greyed out.  Why is that?   I thought if you   picked a prop family they you should be able to pick an individual prop for use from that family.  Right?  Or am I missing something here.  Also none of the prop families have names.  Does anyone have any tips on how to find something quickly without going through all the families to see what props are in them?

Second, is there any way to use the lot editor on a pc that doesn't have SC4 installed.  I know it requires the plugin folders from SC4 but is it possible to make copies of the plugins folders and tell the LE to look for the required files in another location other than in an SC4 directory?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[BarbyW]

You cannot select individual props from a family. A family means that one of the props in that family will appear at random each time the lot grows or is plopped.
To have some of the families show names you need GrampaAl's Lot Editor Addon although not every family is named it will help a bit.

As for using LE on a PC without SC4 I am not certain so will see if anyone else can answer that.

[RippleJet]

You cannot select individual props from a family.

Well, all props that are in a family, do also appear individually among all other indivdual props.
The greyed out names on the right only show which individual props are included in the family in question.

Second, is there any way to use the lot editor on a pc that doesn't have SC4 installed.  I know it requires the plugin folders from SC4 but is it possible to make copies of the plugins folders and tell the LE to look for the required files in another location other than in an SC4 directory?

Strictly read, the End User Licence Agreement doesn't allow you to download and/or install and use more than one copy of the LotEditor.
Whether one download of the tool, installed in one place and copied onto another place and never used at the same time, are considered one or two copies... hmmm...

LotEditor is installed in the Apps folder under the SimCity 4 installation folder. This information is read from the system registry.
Whether a copied installation would work is something I cannot say for sure... testing would tell more I guess...
You might have to copy the system registry for \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Maxis\SimCity4 as well though.

[getdown11]

Thanks for the help you guys.

One more question.

Are all the prop and texture files used by the game typically in .dat files?