Andrew,
I was trying to use Configurable Product at first. But that mechanism doesn't even come close to
what I need; at a minimum, there's no BOM for configurations, which is why production runs are
created immediately upon the creation of an SO for a Configurable Product.
I have since fallen back on Variants. Every aspect of Variants serves my purpose here. So far,
I've only ever tried "Selectable" features, not the rest ("Optional", "Required", etc). So far, it
serves what I need.
Any reason I should be using Configurable Products? Note that my Bicycle-abcd, having 4 variables
a-d in the model number, requires all of those variables. Even a bicycle with no bell is denoted
say by Bicycle-abcN.
Jonathon
Andrew Sykes wrote:
Are you sure this is a set of variants rather than a set of
configurations?
- Andrew
On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 13:18 +0800, Jonathon -- Improov wrote:
Is there a way to have rule-based auto-generation of BOMs? Maybe this has
already been done?
In general, I have a virtual product that can have thousands of variants. I'd like an automated
way to generate all the possible variants.
One aspect I'm gonna be looking at is rule-based auto-generation of variants' productId. This
shouldn't be difficult, and can easily be linked to the QuickAddVariants page (the checkboxes in
column "All"). If someone is already doing this, let me know so we can collaborate?
The bigger problem I have is the auto-generation of BOMs, the lack thereof
rather.
Say I have virtual product Bicycle, and variants Bicycle-abcd, where abcd are variables. I'd like
variable 'a' to be the top-most in hierarchy and 'd' the last. For example, my bicycles could come
with different frame sizes 1 through 5, which will require different BOM components Frame1 to
Frame5. I'd want all variants Bicycle-1bcd to have a BOM component of Frame1, Bicycle-2bcd Frame2,
and so on.
Even a semi-automated process will be alright for now.
I'd suggest an enhancement to the EditProductBom screen. Add a function to list all variants,
search can be constrained by selection of (standard) features. This function can be copied from
"Lookup Variant Product" somehow. Allow "Copy BOM" to apply to a number of variants at once.
Any ideas?
Jonathon
