Virtuemart 3.0—Product Configuration with two options

Question

I am trying to figure out if the setup of products is possible with virtuemart 3.0, but I cannot wrap my head around it completely.

My Goal:

One Product with one Option for colour and another for size, so that two Dropdown Menus appear on Product view. Each combination of colour and size should map to a »child« product.

So far I have:

1. one custom Field: Generic Child Variant,
2. two custom Fields: type: String, as list, with values for colours and sizes
3. a »parent« product, with these three custom fields attached
4. some child products with a discrete colour and size

That gives me a page with one Dropdown-Menu to select the different child products, but I would like to have a dropdown for colour and one for size. If the user changes one, the desired discrete product is loaded.

Is that possible with Virtuemart 3.0? If yes, how can I set this up?

Thanks in ahead!

Answer 1

The way to do that is either by using the multi-variant plug-in which is introduced in Virtuemart 3.0.6 http://virtuemart.net/news/latest-news/468-virtuemart-3-0-6-with-completely-redesigned-multi-variants

or by using a 3rd party plug-in like the Stockable custom fields http://breakdesigns.net/extensions/stockable-custom-fields

Answer 2

I am at the same stage. Using multi variant custom field one can set Size and Color, for example, but creating those dropdowns is NOT intuitive.

Reading the documentation made no sense to me at all. I actually had to watch instructional videos three or four times, trying to create the two dropdowns, until I finally got the sequence right.

Create your Multivariant custom field, give it all overall kind of name, like Product Options.

In your product, get rid of all your children first, if any. Add a custom field of Multi Variant (it is a super mega custom field that does all in one). choosing the name you gave it, which in our case is Product Options.

Use custom label and name it eg Colors Fill in the text box with your color options, one per line eg Red, Green, Blue

Save it

Add a New Ramification by choosing your Product Options multivariant

Click on New

Give it a custom label of Size for example

Fill in the text field with all the sizes, eg S, M, L, XL

Save all this

Then Add Child Products until you have enough to meet all your possible combinations. If you have 3 colors and 4 sizes, you will make 12 children. Yikes.

Edit each one to have a unique size/color combinations in the custom label fields.

etc, the rest is pretty straight forward.

You can go in and tweak each of the children from the Products screen.

Personally, I think this is way too much work in this day and age of automation. There is an extension that will let me import from a spreadsheet. So I am creating one product with all the custom fields and other options, then will look at the exported CSV file to see how the fields are set up, then will import all my products.