Multi-axial varianted product support for OpenERP

OpenERP is already supporting a product variants at the core level. But without this module, variants are only mono-axial. OpenERP indeed uses the product.template as the model object and the product.variant as the instance variant. Using this module, you can now easily deal with multi-axial variants.

A product.template, now has a set of dimensions (like Color, Size, anything you want). For each dimension, a product.template has a set of dimension values (like Red, Green for the Color dimension). For each dimension, you can accept or not custom dimension values. Dimensions can be shared between products.

Once the product.template is set up, you can use a 'generator' button that will populate the space of the variants. You could also choose to populate only some combinations by hand instead.

Each variant can have an extra price that will be taken into account when computing the base listed price. Yet to be implemented: a price extra per variant dimension value. Finally, this module is better used along with the product_variant_configurator which will help the salesman selecting the appropriate variant in the sale order line using dimension criteria instead of having to crawl the full space of variants. The selection can also be done by name if a proper naming convention is adopted.

Gotchas: Because many OpenERP reports refer only to the product name without taking care of the variant, we decided it's better that each variant has a different name expliciting the variant specifics. So we override the product.template#name field and make it optional while product.product now has a new mandatory name field. This is usualy transparent as OpenERP modules try to get their properties like name from product.product and only from product.template if not found on product.product. But at least you will have been warned.

The dependence to the stock module is weak, it's only there to be able to put the variant menu in the warehouse management sub-menu (sigh!).