Austpost dimensions not showing in product admin

[jubbs]

I have added the Austpost module to a new zencart installation and it seems to work OK except that I can not set package dimensions in the products admin pages.

All the posts that I refer to about this seem to indicate that they should be there and indeed I see in the code reference to products_length, etc but the code makes no adjustments to the admin side to make them available in the admin pages.

What am I missing?

Jubbs

[Marco B]

I believe you can only apply one set of package dimensions that apply to all orders within the AusPost shipping module config.
Admin->Modules->Shipping->AusPost

I did something on the USPS module that supports dimension sizes based on weight, though I don't think the AusPost module or any stock standard modules calculate box dimensions based on products qty etc.

ZenCart doesn't have LxWxH fields in the products table so that is another custom modification.

That sounds like a specialised feature since you would have to specify a set of box sizes you would use, then the module would need an algorithm to fit the order items into the correct box.
Each product can have a different shape (LxWxH) so problem solving is required to pack the box with minimum free volume left over.
Easy for a human to do, but programming it? - It sounds 4th year Computer Science problem.

It may be possible to use the code I added for dimensions based on weight and apply it to the AusPost module. That would save a fair amount of work if it suits your needs.

This shows how the weight based dimensions work in the USPS Module:

[Marco B]

I have been toying with the idea for a while (doing packing based on product dimensions) but there is no easy solution, though it depends on the number of items etc..

The proper name for what you want is called bin packing..

This study has allot of citations: nctu.edu.tw - A Simple On-Line Bin-Packing Algorithm.pdf
I was considering implementing something like that.

Logen Solutions has software that does what you want, though it might be expensive and unsuitable for zencart integration.
http://www.logensolutions.com/

Packing items into the correct size boxes efficiently is like asking a computer to play 3d tetris for you, except you have to deal with all the pieces at once.

[Marco B]

I'm slightly frustrated with the 7min edit limit put on posts..

Wikipedia has some details on it if you want to consider implementing it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_packing
The external links section has a few algorithms written in PHP that can be used.