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Vocabulary - Product Configuration

Feature

See Product Configuration.

Material

A Material defines the texture of a Model. Materials is what makes it possible to display your item in glorious leopard patterned fabric.

Material Mapping

Synonyms: Area to Materials, Material Application

What Materials are applied to what Model parts is controlled through a Tag-system . Parts of Models have tags, and tags are mapped to Materials on different levels. Least priority goes to Material Mappings defined on Catalogue-level, next goes Mappings defined on Product level and highest priority has Product Configuration where the most specific selection has highest priority.

The combination of Catalogue, Product and Product Configuration will generate a Material Mapping were each tag is mapped to a Material. If no Material can be found for a tag it will fall back to Materials embedded in the Model.

Using tags for other programming purposes than Material Mapping is probably possible, but nothing we support outright.

Tags have other names (or other names are closely enough related for them to be used interchangeably in the context of Material Mapping).

  • AreaTag
  • Area (in the API)
  • Layers (from Model Lab)
  • SurfaceId (from Catalogue Creator)
  • SymTag (this is how the tags are stored in the model data)

Option

See Product Configuration.

Product Configuration

A Product can be user configured. This is the core of what the Web Configurator is about – showing Products in 3D and letting the user select how the Product should be configured.

The configuration can affect both geometry and texture. There are really no limitations to how the configuration can affect the geometry or texture, but mostly Products works as you would expect them to. Like a chair, it’s likely you would be allowed to select the upholstery, paint color and maybe the back rest. You would expect to still see the same chair, but as previous stated, there are not technical limitations.

How a Product is configurable is defined by Features and Options. These words hold special meaning in the context of Catalogues.

A Feature is typically something like “Seat”, “Back color” or “Legs”. A Feature has Options, typically more than one. Depending on the Feature one Option may be selected (like in a dropdown menu), multiple Options can be selected (like checkboxes) or all Options are always selected (used as a grouping feature).

An Option is typically something like “Green”, Round seat” or “Polka dots with Zebra stripes”. An Option can in turn have Features. Thus, Features and Options define a tree.

Selecting or unselecting an Option has the following consequences:

  • The sub-Features toggles availability depending on the Option’s selectedness.

  • What Models are used can change. Imagine changing the backrest of a chair, since the new one has a different shape a new Model must be used.

    What Models are used cannot be determined client side. A Validate call must be made to the server which will respond with a new set of Models (or the same ones).

  • Price and such meta-data can change. In the same manner as Models this is evaluated server side and the new data will be given in the response of a Validate call.

  • Material may change. Imagine the upholstery of your chair changing from corduroy to leopard.

    What Materials will be used is evaluated client side, and so it’s in theory possible to apply a material change before doing the Validate call. However, before getting the reply from Validate you won’t know if the configuration you requested is legal.

This description does not describe the inner workings of how Features, Options, what is selected and the API-calls work. We recommend you use our CfgProduct-class as an intermediate when working with Product Selection. This in turn uses the CfgProductSelection-class which exposes the tree with selections in a way which is closer to how you would present it, compared to the inner representation.

Stretch

See Catalogue Stretch.

Sync Group

Sync Groups is a functionality in Catalogues where Features are made to try to stay in sync with each other. It is sort of a layer on top off the normal handling of selecting Options on Features and it is applied in a "best effort"-manner. Two Features belonging to the same Sync Group should be thought of as an intent for them to stay in sync. However, there is no hard connection involved. The Features can have different or partially overlapping domains (what Options can be selected) so there is no guarantee that they can always stay in sync. It's up to the Catalogue creator to build the Catalogue so that his or her intention is met.

Tag

Synonyms: Area

See Material Mapping.