How to allow for a customer to order custom products in realtime on my site

[marcd]

Hi folks!

First off, let me offer a big thank you to all who aid in the development of Virtuemart, Joomla!, and any other free open source project. We support the products we use, and so for sure an appropriate donation will be made for you folks here. That is, once I can launch this new site.

As for my reason to post, I am trying to find a solution that is not so much unique as it is hard to word for search engines (at least for me - I've tried.) And so, at risk of rehashing someone else's post by accident, I am asking for help on the subject:

I am developing a new website for a new division in our company (actually a site on a subdomain of the parent company's site). The new division sells industrial and commercial grade electronics cables; more specifically cables and connectors for CNC machines. Although I can see how easy it is to display premade/preconfigured cables through Virtuemart, it's not very clear at all to how to allow an online customer to create their own cables and then submit the order. In a nutshell, I am looking to achieve these:

• Customer can select length of cable, and then the configuration of both ends (9-pin, 25-pin, etc.)
• Customer can then add/alter attributes to the custom product (add a flying lead, or declare this a 'powered' cable, etc.)
• Price of custom product is augmented in realtime.

To confuse things a little more, some added attributes' cost (like the 'powered' cable in point 2) vary depending on the length of the cable chosen. This is because there is a different cost in the powered and non-powered versions of cabling. Therefore 10' of 'powered' cable would cost more than 10' of 'NON-powered'.

It has been a bit of a brainbuster for me. I hope I don't have to do much file editing. But I am not afraid to do it if that yields the best results.

Better yet, if any of you have a better idea on how to achieve my customization goals, I am all ears.

I eagerly await your responses!