How to deal with too much product variations / attributes?

Question

I'm quite new to Drupal Commerce, but I've seen some Drupal before (not actually a guru).

Dealing now with handmade models, each product has 9 sizes, 6 colors, 6 materials. They have now about 130 models. I started dealing with it creating a product per variation (commerce_bpc). But 300+ variations per product display became a little unbearable, because it was intended for a local shop and they should be able to create new models and edit old ones a little bit faster.

We decided to make the products just size dependant (price changes only according to size, and there would be no special images for colors and materials).

So, my first approach was to use the image as a product display field. But:

• What about the attributes? Is the correct way to use material and color as select list in the Display, too? Will I be able to use them later in the checkout and the orders?
• Or should I stick to 1 product per variation and handle them in some other way? I think that's the NATURAL way, but it just feels like overkilling.

Also, any insight on how to handle a large list of products (edit, bulk actions, add them to display, etc..)?

Answer 1

Views Bulk Operations? There is also the Commerce Bulk Product Creation. Some more details about it (from its project page):

This module facilitates the creation of groups of related products in bulk. Product administrators can select a number of options for various fields, and a product will be created for all possible combinations of these values. Out of the box, only list fields are supported for this, but an API exists to enable other types of fields for 'combination creation'.

The module also provides various ways to create display nodes for the newly-created products:

• Redirect user to node creation form (with title and product reference filled in).
• Silently create display node referencing all created products.
• Silently create one display node for each created product.

This will greatly speed up the task of adding numerous products at once.