Lot of "options" or "characteristics"...

Here's my situation... I have a product (an automotive part) that is custom made. Each product has 4 different options for customisation with styles and logo selections. To complicate matters further, each option has several color choices. I've tried setting this up using characteristics but as expected, the multiple combinations is too much for the server to handle. I read that options was probably more appropriate so I tried that. It works but if I then add a second item to the cart with different options, I don't know which options go together with which product as they're grouped together wrong.

Check out the following url to see what I mean... www.designcutz.com/Our-Products/product/show/product_id-5.html

I've set the "Color 1" as a characteristic and the rest as options (each with two characteristics - style/color).

Also, is there a way of changing the order of options and characteristics or specifying which option is selected by default?

You should just turn on the option "group options with products" in the Checkout tab of the configuration.
That way, you will have the options together with their products in the cart and the order.

:woohoo: Sweet... that worked perfectly... knew I must be missing something somewhere.

Any pointer on the order of the dropdown within each option?

Within each option, the order is done based on the option "Characteristics values ordering" of the Display tab of the configuration, either alphabetically, or by order of addition to the characteristic of the product.

Thanks again... I'm not sure I'm making myself completely clear. I understand I can order the characteristics/options etc within the product but, when I click on the dropdown for the appropriate option/characteristic, there does not appear to be a way of ordering the way these options show. For example, if one option/characteristic is to add a logo, my dropdown options might be "Logo 1, Logo 2, No Logo"... If I wanted "No Logo" to be the default option at the top of the dropdown, is there a way to do this?

Loving Hikashop!!!

As I said, the order of these "Logo 1, Logo 2, No Logo" is done based on the option "Characteristics values ordering" of the Display tab of the configuration, either alphabetically, or by order of addition to the characteristic of the product.
So make sure that the 'no logo' is the first one added in your characteristic (if not, delete the characteristic and redo it) and make sure that the option "Characteristics values ordering" is set to 'ID'