Hey all, got Zen-cart up and running and now just trying to figure out the best way to layout categories and products for my needs.

I will be selling auto body parts, and they are best looked up by vehicle make, model, and year.

I'm a little stumped on the best way to layout my categories. My thought was to have line codes as main cat, then, make as sub, model as sub, year as sub.

So:
Lights (Main Line/Cat)
--Make (sub of lights)
--Chevrolet (sub of make)
--Model (sub of xmake (chevrolet)
--Silverado (sub of model)
--Year (sub of xmodel)
--Products

This seems like the most logical way, except it looks as though it would be tedious to update and maintain, and I can't see a way where someone could show *all parts* for that specific vehicle.

The other thing is that all the parts have a specific year range. So one part may be 05-07 Silverado, and another may be 03-07 Silverado, etc.. If i'm understanding right, every product would have to be under every year sub category that it belonged to.

The other option I was thinking of was to just put the parts under their respective line codes, so all lights under Lights (main cat), all mirrors under Mirrors (main cat), etc... and then using a different type of look up to display the parts.

I have already added additional fields to the products database consisting of make, model, start year, end year, and it seems like it would be easier to just pull the products using a drop down that selects, make, then model, then year that falls on or between yearone and yeartwo and displays the parts. A line code field could and probably should be added so the customer can then narrow it further to by the type of part they are looking for.

I'm pretty much at a standstill on what to do, and would appreciate the advice and suggestions from those of you more experienced with zen cart. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks for any advice you give.