What is Grouped Products
Grouped Products is a feature that allows for the logical grouping of 3D assets (products) within Cylindo's visualisation software, facilitating easier creation and integration of products with more than 3000 unique configurations. When handling highly configurable products, we encounter customers who define products in various ways, often reflecting the setup of their e-commerce or ERP systems. For example, one customer might identify a King and a Queen size bed as two separate products, each with unique identifiers in their ERP system, while another might consider them as a single product with a unique identifier that offers two size options: King and Queen.
For highly complex products, it’s challenging from a production point of view to handle all logic in a single scene. In cases where the product has more than 3000 unique configurations it’s challenging for our render pipeline and for our asset creation team to manage. To simplify both the asset creation process and the integration process we introduce grouped products that allow us to create a "virtual" product code, that we internally can link to multiple products.
How to create and edit Grouped Products?
To create a new Grouped product you need to the following:
- Give the new Grouped Product a name and a unique Virtual Product Code. The product code must be unique within a Chaos Cylindo account.
- Select the product that should be included in the grouped product and specify a default product
- Select one or multiple distinct features across the selected products. The Distinctive feature must exist on all products included in the group and it must have identical code across all products included.
- Once the name and code for the group is set and the products and distinctive features are selected the group can be created and published. Once published the product group can be consumed via content API as if it was a regular product.
Grouped Products and Product Versions
A Published Group Product always use the latest published version of each underlying Master Asset, or Product. So changes introduced on a underlaying asset will automatically be reflected on the Group Product.
A new version of a Grouped Product will look at the latest version of the underlaying Master Asset. So when working on product updates that introduce changes to the distinguishing features, you can create a new Grouped Product version and verify that the changes works as expected on the Grouped Product before you publish the Master Asset and Grouped Product.
Content API support for Grouped Products
Content API support grouped products in exactly the same way as we support products. See Content API documentation.
| Description | Content API Request | Content API Response |
|---|---|---|
| Regular Content API request for a Master Asset (Product) |
https://content.cylindo.com/ |
|
| Grouped Product with the distinguishing feature SIZE set to SMALL. |
https://content.cylindo.com/ |
|
| Grouped Product with the distinguishing feature SIZE set to LARGE. |
https://content.cylindo.com/ |
Grouped Product Limitations
Grouped product is only a concept in Content API and internally the CMS system doesn't support it.
- Grouped products cannot be added to Studio
- Grouped products cannot be used in Dimension shots
- Grouped products will be listed separately from individual products
- Grouped products can not be used in Curator
This means that when a customer wants to create a Studio / Dimension shot, they will use the Master Asset (also known as Products in the Cylindo CMS).
Validation of grouped product
If we want to use grouped products to give two sofas a "virtual" product code. We need a way to uniquely identify what product we should pick if the customer is using the "virtual" product code. So we introduced something called a distinct feature that can be any feature or combination of multiple features that all the products you want to group have.
Imagine a scenario where you have multiple variations of a sofa. The sofa may come in two hights (e.g. HIGH, LOW) and sizes (e.g. 75”, 85”). Let's say the that both the size and the hight are the distinct features:
Valid distinct features:
- Each sofa must have all the specified distinct features (e.g. the distinct features are hight and size.
- No two sofas should have the same combination of the distinct features options (e.g. you cannot have distinct future and two red sofas). A valid combination:
| Name | Hight | Size | |
| Sofa 1 | High | 85” | ✅Unique |
| Sofa 2 | Low | 85” | ✅Unique |
| Sofa 3 | High | 75” | ✅Unique |
| Sofa 4 | Low | 75” | ✅Unique |
Invalid distinct features:
- A sofa is missing a required distinct feature (e.g. a sofa without a size specified).
- Two or more sofas have the same combination of the distinct features (e.g. two red sofas in size small).
| Name | Hight | Size | |
| Sofa 1 | High | 75” | ⛔️Sofa 2 has the same combination |
| Sofa 1 | Low | 75” | ✅Unique |
| Sofa 2 | High | 75” | ⛔️Sofa 1 has the same combination |
| Sofa 2 | Low | 85” | ✅Unique |
Grouped Products - Guidelines for production
Grouped products make the creation of assets easier and simplify integration of highly complex. Besides these benefits, by splitting up assets we also introduce a higher model / option count. The following guidelines must therefore be followed when making a decision to group products.
A product can max be 3000 unique geometry combinations. Products with more than 3000 geometry combinations are significantly harder to model and to set up to match the customers product logic.
Who and how do we decide to split up a product.
The quoting team who analyze products pre sales will try with best effort to capture all products with more than 3000 unique geometry combinations and ensure that we split them in as separate assets when we analyze the scope.
If scope changes or quoting did not catch the number of geometry configurations on a product, the pre production team will split the product into multiple products to get below the max 3000 geometry combination rule. When pre-production concludes that a product need to be split up, the team must consult with the project manager and ensure that the customer is informed about the practicalities
Project Management Guidelines:
If there is a need to group products, it’s important that the customer is made aware and that we keep the information about the products that will be grouped together as clear as possible. Typically, there is a significant amount of geometry combinations so the Master Project spreadsheet needs to be structured in a way so it makes it easy for customers, production team and partners to understand how the product is split up and what the Virtual Product code will be.
In this example, we have a complex bed product. In the Master project spreadsheet the distinctive feature are marked with a red background and all assets that conducts a group product are grouped together, making it easy for both the production team and customer to see how the assets will be setup
Example of Master Project Spreadsheet for Grouped products
Grouped Products - Examples
| Case | Description | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Single distinctive feature | Product grouped on a single distinctive feature | Example of Bed in two sizes |
| Two distinctive features | Product grouped on two distinctive features | Example of Sofa in 2 sizes and 2 heights |
| Grouped Product with Grouped Feature | Example of two products with a grouped feature that are setup as a Grouped Product | Sofa in 2 sizes with grouped Leather & Fabric feature |
|
Grouped product - Camera position |
If the camera/ light setup is the same across all products in a group, the consumer will not notice that the underlying assets are set up as individual products. If the camera position is unique per asset, the content will “jump” around in the Viewport |
Grouped Product with the same camera per asset |
|
Grouped product - with different features |
5 products, that consist of different features grouped together on the SIZE Feature | Cabinet and Sofa grouped together |
Grouped Products - FAQ:
Why do we need to split a customer's product into multiple assets on the Cylindo Platform?
For products composed of multiple components that can be altered, the total number of potential configurations can reach millions or even billions. In extreme cases, some products may have quintillions of configurations. Managing all the logic in a single scene for such highly complex products is challenging from a production standpoint. When a product exceeds 3000 unique geometry configurations, we must divide it into multiple scenes. Grouped products allow us to combine these under one "virtual" product code, enabling customers to request content from multiple Master Assets as if it were a single product.
Can material features be selected as distinctive, or is it only geometry features that can be chosen?
Any type of feature can be distinctive. The system solely considers the feature and options code. The distinctive feature must share the same code across all grouped products, and the option codes within a distinctive feature must be unique, as the Content API uses this information to identify the correct underlying product when a customer requests a visualization using a "virtual product code."
What happens if I add new options to a Distinctive Feature?
Adding new options to a distinctive feature will automatically update the grouped product with these options as soon as you publish the underlying product asset.
What happens if I edit the Distinctive feature?
Editing a distinctive feature, such as changing the feature code, will cause the grouped product to malfunction, as it is configured to operate with a specific code across multiple products. When such changes are made, you need to adjust the Grouped Product setup to ensure it is configured correctly.
What happens if I create a new version of a product used in a Grouped Product?
Publishing a new version of a product automatically updates the grouped product to include this version. Therefore, if you alter the distinct features of a product within a product group, you must also create a new version of the entire product group.
How do grouped products impact model and option count?
Grouped Products entail splitting highly complex products (i.e., those with more than 3000 unique geometry configurations) into multiple Master Assets. Moving forward, our Quoting process will account for these products by including the additional models and option counts for products we initially split.
Who decides if a product should be grouped?
The decision to group a product is made by the Cylindo quoting and production team or the channel partner setting up the product. If the number of geometry configurations exceeds the maximum supported in a single scene, they will split the product into multiple assets.
How do we decide what the distinctive feature of a product should be?
For highly configurable products, each new configurable component can double the number of possible configurations. Managing a product with a high number of geometries is more complex than managing one with many materials. To simplify and reduce errors in setup, we recommend dividing products along a geometry dimension, such as height or size features, as these often affect many other meshes in the scenes.