It really varies for me. Depending on who I need to create to fit story. Sometimes it's just a filler character, and sometimes it's someone who I will be focusing on developing during my rotations. That said, I always try to spend as little time as possible in CAS, because I don't enjoy the process of trying to style a sim.
Sometimes it takes me 1+ hours if I am really invested in creating a long lasting Sim and can't find proper clothes to match, or am meddling too much with the make-up sliders. Sometimes I just randomize and slightly adjust anything I don't like, if the Sim is just a sidekick. But I enjoy building and storytelling way more than CAS, so I try to keep the necessary time in CAS as short as possible so I can move on to the fun things.
I do go to CAS a bit while playing, when I need to edit generated sims, rename, or edit and create relatives, but that usually doesn't take more than 10 minutes per.
Oh and almost forgot that the CAS includes creating Cats and Dogs. I spend more time on creating my dogs than I do creating my human sims. I love the paint feature and all the ways to change shape of everything. Almost every household I play has some/many dogs and some cats, and those who don't will get them somewhere down the line. They usually get strays but then I give them a complete make over based largely on the dogs I know IRL. I wonder if there's anyone else who spends more time on creating dogs than their human sims?
