Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enables its users to easily model configurable products.In my first post From Items to Products, I talked about what products in Dynamics AX 2012 are and how they evolved from Items in AX2009. In that post I mentioned that the available options when creating new product is to select Product, Product master or Product variant. The first option (Product) is for creating simple products that don’t have any variations. The other two are used when more complex products are created, i.e. products that can have several variation of size, color or configuration.
Product masters represent the basis for creating configurable products and creating product variants. The data that is common for all product variations is defined within the Product master record.
For every Product master, several Product variants can be created. They are the configuration of a product master, and the actual product that will be used in transactions such as inventory transactions.
How product variations will be created depends of the configuration technology that is selected for the product master. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 offers the following configuration technologies:
- Predefined variant
- Dimension-based configuration
- Constraint-based configuration
- Rule-based configuration
Based on the choice of the configuration technology, the product variant can be either predefined by using the product dimensions of its master or configured by using a configurator tool.
So what is the difference between these configuration technologies in Dynamics AX 2012?
Predefined variant is used as configuration technology when the set of product variants is already known and is finite. Product variants are created first by selecting specific product dimensions, color, configuration or size, and then creating the variants with values for the selected product dimensions. The variant uniqueness is based on the combination of one or more product dimensions. So with this configuration technology all combinations of product dimensions are already known and predefined and only these combinations can be used.
Dimension-based configuration it is not possible (or not relevant) to define all possible combinations of product dimensions during product configuration. Instead, all available dimensions and their values are configured, but the actual variant is selected by the user that uses the product record in sales order for example. So with this configuration technology all combinations of product dimensions are not predefined and during product usage any combination of product dimensions can be used.
Constraint-based configuration and Rule-based configuration technologies are used when you need to model configurable products with more advanced constraints and rules regarding the selection of product dimensions. The products with this configuration technology can be used in the Product Configurator (in AX2009 known as Product Builder).
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