I’m just starting with Commerce and got a little stuck with product variations. I have 6 product options (colours) but for each option there are another 5 (embroidery) options - these options aren’t reliant on the first options. So I’d need 30 options if I only had one ‘select’. I created a second product tv to hold the other 5 options but how do I add all these options to the cart in one go, once selected? Thank you
Commerce operates on the idea that each unique product on your shelves, is a unique product in the shop, but in cases like this that gets a bit in the way.
An option I’ve been meaning to try is dynamically creating bundle products to put together different options that make a unique product.
I’m also looking at making it easier to add custom fields to order items, so for options that don’t affect price/stock/weight, you’d be able of using that.
Thank you Mark - all sounds good. In the meantime, can you tell me if the following is currently possible either with Commerce or SimpleCart?
I have a resource called Pet Blanket
Linked to this resource are 6 products that represent colours - they each have the same price and weight - need to track stock
Then there are 10 further linked products each with their own price that don’t affect stock
(I tested in Commerce at this point and although I can get 2 sets of product options to show using separate tvs, only the selection from the second option set gets added to the cart.)
Then there would be a third option set to choose a typeface for embroidery - again could easily be a linked product with no price - does not affect stock
I’d then need a text box to allow the customer to type in the name of the pet.
At the moment, SimpleCart makes what you need easier than Commerce. With SimpleCart you can have multiple product options with its options TV, and it supports custom fields simply by adding any field to your add to cart form. You can’t currently have different stock levels per option though, so you would need to create separate product resources for each color (which have the stock) and then add the other options/typeface to its options TV.
Commerce is stricter, so you’d need to build custom products and add to cart logic to make what you describe work in v0.10.
OK - thank you Mark - seems like I need to switch to SimpleCart (I’m desperately trying to avoid Magento).
One more question if I may: in SimpleCart once I’ve set up the base products (essentially the blanket colours) do I then need to add all options to each of these base products or is there a way of linking the same options to each base product?
Sorry for all the questions but I don’t want to end up at a dead end.
The options tv in simplecart can have a default value that is used on products by default. They wouldn’t be “linked” per se, but you could save yourself some typing by setting that up properly if all your products have the same options.
Depending on when the project starts, you could also ask me the same question again in two months. Maybe I’ll have finished making it simpler in Commerce then 
Thank you Mark. I’ll give SimpleCart a go. Commerce is certainly good to use and straightforward. Something similar to Magento Configurable Products would be just fantastic but I realise what a task this is 
Just read your answer again and realised that the products won’t all have the same options so that’s a no-go. Just looking at the SimpleCart demo, is there no way of duplicating a product and there fore the options? Sorry to be needy!