Design/Functionality question... giving the user the ability to "build" his own shirt

[famousb]

Greetings all.

I have a somewhat complex design i want to do (at least complex IMO, or in my mind right now).

 

Currently, we have a cart where users can buy t-shirts, hoodies, and long sleeve shirts with our own designs on them.

The way we currently have it set up is that the user chooses Mens/Womens, then Tshirt/Hoodie/Long sleeve, then the logo design they want, and the actual product info will allow them to choose size and color.

 

However, we want to redesign the entire catalog so it is based around the designs.

So that the user would come in and choose a design (from say 20 designs), then choose a the apparel type, then choose the color options from there and size from there. And we want to do it w/o having to actually add every logo, apparel, color combination as a separate item. Ideally, they would choose the design and apparel type (eg. t-shirt) and then that would take them to the actual product info page, with product attributes of color and size.

 

To make things slightly more complex, the color options for the different types of apparel will be different. e.g. tshirts may come in black, blue, white, green, red, etc... where hoodies will only be offered in black and white, and long sleeves may be offered in black, white, ecru, etc...

 

So the product attribute of color would have to filter according to the apparel type. Also, the different apparel types will obviously have different costs - so that has to be something considered too...

 

I would think the most organized way to do this would be to have "sub product attributes" but i don't know if something like that exists. So if a user would first just choose a design, that would take them directly to the actual product info page, and then s/he would choose the apparel type (tshirt, hoodie), and then once that was chosen the appropriate color options would appear as well as sizes....

 

the programming on this doesn't seem like it would be too complex, and actually pretty straight-forward. But if there is something like this already developed, i'd rather plug it in then start from scratch...

 

Any ideas?

 

TIA!

[lindsayanng]

there is a PC BUILDER contribution i believe. I came across it not that long ago i think. That would probably have a lot of code in it that you could use. You might be able to strip it down to what you need and throw out what you didnt. there are also contriburtions where you can use the attributes like you said, and the attributes will show a different image if you choose it. that could help too.

[famousb]

thanks, that may at least get me going in the right direction...

will have to see once i'm in it if it would just be easier to start from scratch instead...

 

figure it really would just be a table or two, and a few sql statements anyway... shouldn't really be all that hard the more i think about it.