General Qs and dilemnas

I am looking at the ZenCart as an option for a shopping cart platform.

I currently have a tad over 500 different products with anywhere from 5-20 different variables (options) for each product.

As you can imagine this would make for an enourmous .CSV file.

Is it possible to create and assign different variables to an entire category or subcategory without it affecting the rest of the items in the DB from the admin menus?

Here is a couple of examples:

Example 1:

Medal
a. 40 different options for choice of ribbon color
1) some ribbons would increase price of medal. others would not
b. 3 lines of text to be engraved on medal

I would like to add those options as painlessly as possible to over 150 different medals without having to manually pull up each medal in the admin screen and choose the appropriate options.

Example 2:
Plaque
a. size determines price
b. 10-15 different plate colors to choose from
c. 5 different layout styles for the plaque
d. 30 or so lines of user inputable text
d. 5 different font options for user inputted text on plaque
I would like to add those options as painlessly as possible to over 90 different plaques without having to manually pull up each medal in the admin screen and choose the appropriate options.

Just using those 2 examples there. I end up with a .CSV file showing close to 100 different options for every item in the .CSV

Any help, ideas or pointers?