350 Attributes per Product

[Nictech]

I have done a couple of Zen Cart sites but have been away for a few months and Wow! things are sure growing, hats off to the dev team Zen is all grown up.

I am trying to put together a cart for a client with 5 automotive products. Each product is available for about 350 different makes/models of cars.

I would like to show a dropdown for each make ( about 50 ) Chevrolet, Ford etc. Have seen the posts about the "Select a Model" , display only, default, to force the user to make a choice but multiple dropdowns throw an error for each, so although they made one choice the other 49 will error.

See test product with 2 dropdowns here: (v 1.3.7)
http://scissor-doors.com/cart/index....&products_id=1

Can any of the great minds here offer a solution to managing this many attributes?

I have read rumours off progressive attributes in the 1.4, that sounds incredible, but I am impatient like others...

Thanks

[Ajeh]

If I was a customer and had to figure out 350 attributes ... I'd go to NAPA ...

A lot of sites use the Categories to break up things:

Trying to put that many attributes on a single Product is going to put a heck of a load on the server ...

The current attributes do not have dependant attribute relationships ...

This can be written, but I have not yet seen it written to manage this issue ...

[Nictech]

Thanks for the reality check Linda, I have been browsing for a few hours hoping for a miracle, looks like 50 makes (categories) with a few models in each will be the way to go.

Dang, I was so impressed with with Zen I thought it could do anything.

Good luck with 1.4, can't wait to try it...