Been playing around with Legato's Japanese buildings and a couple of them pull a disappearing act in the CS. I place them in the cell, move them around and then as soon as I turn on the landscaping tool they disappear. Load another cell and then reload the cell the buildings were in and there they are. Turn on the landscaping tool and poof! Gone. Reload the mod and they're back where they're supposed to be. But turn on the landscaping tool and they disappear again. What gives? Sometime they do this even without the landscaping tool on. Just clicking on some empty ground make them disappear. Even did a texture job on them and they still pull the disappearing act. Any clues as to why, 'O mighty gurus of the CS?

Sounds like an issue with the models. If the modeler neglects to put a "Bounding Box" in they can sometimes do a weird "disappearing" act in the CS. (actually they jump to 0, 0, 0) Only way to fix it is in 3Ds Max. I don't think it happens in-game, so your mod will play OK, it'll just annoy you in the CS.

The easiest way I've found to place them in the CS is to place them, and then drag them across the screen. They should warp to 0, 0, then back to where you dragged them if you did them right, and then they can dragged easily.

OK, here's what's been happening with some models:

One model does this little jerk when I set it in in an interior cell, and either moves to some part of the cell far away, or moves a few "feet" away, depending on where I place it. And sometimes after several of them has been placed, and I move one of them, they all move to a far-off area of the cell. Until I find them, and start to move one of them. Then they are all suddenly back where they were before...

And today, a bunch of different modder models seemed to have disappeared when I hadn't moved any of them, yet when I clicked on them in the cell details screen to go to them, the editor showed they were still there, but invisible.

This is only happening with a few models in this project. Some are creature nifs by Cait Sith that I retextured, and only used the non-X models of. And some are a composite of bodyparts that a kind modder put together as several sizes of a statue.

Is there something that needs to be done when making models to avoid this happening? If I knew, I could include that info when I do a modeling request.

Or is there a way I can set the editor to fix this problem?

as far as I understand this when you place them the editor will show them moved but they should still be where you placed them and when you go into the game you will find them where you placed them.... this also happens when someone makes a model and does not add a bounding box to the mesh.... the editor will assign it's own bounding box and cause these problems....

IF you dont use the Bounding box, the one that the game generates use the pivot as the Center of the model, and it can make REALLY weird sutff like Kishinju said.
But this is a real problem when the model is based on an imported one.

So I should be sure to specify that a bounding box is added to a mesh?

Yep! That will solve exactly the problem you're describing.

Only way to fix the existing models you have is to import them into Max and add the box.

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