Custom Fields (Items)

Hi, there -
[updated]
Custom Item Fields are tied to categories - excellent feature...

This is the scenario:
The web shop in question (test site w3.hollywooddogs.dk ) sells articles for dogs, among these also dog tags, which they engrave. The task is to have customer editable input fields

The tags come in different flavours, each independant of each other:
1st split:
1a: Some have ornaments on the front side -> engraving only possible on the back
1b: Some don't have ornaments -> engraving possible both on the front and on the back

2nd split:
2a: Some are smaller -> only 4 rows with 15 chars per line possible
2b: Some are bigger -> 4 rows with 28 chars per line possible

(In addition, depending on shape, they may hold 4 or 5 rows of text, but let's skip that for simplicity for now.)

So, ideally, this is a two-by-two matrix, not a tree structure. However, I imagine we need a category tree structure like this:
Root: Dog tags
Sub 1: Dog tags with ornaments
Sub 1.a: Small dog tags with ornaments
Sub 1.b: Large dog tags with ornaments
Sub 2: Dog tags without ornaments
Sub 2.a: Small dog tags without ornaments
Sub 2.b: Large dog tags without ornaments

Question 1: When the customer drills down the categories, we would like all dog tags to be displayed on the same page (i.e., the customer won't need to drill through the subs above). Should I arrange this e.g. by hidden categories, with the extra work for the shop keeper to always add new tags to two categories [update: which works], or is there a better way?

Question 2: If a shopper has two dogs (with differnet names, eh...) and wants to buy same size, same look, how do I prevent HikaShop from aggregating the orders (which would end up shipping two identical tags), but treat them as individual items, once the custom field is filled in? [update - this works out of the box when using hidden categories - when the custom fields are filled in, you may order the same item again - with a new text.]

Question 3: Idealy, the shopkeeper should want to see both the shorter (15 chars) and the longer (28 chars) texts ending up the same place (I guess that would mean sharing column name). Possible, or will my shop keeper have to live with this?

Thanks for a brilliant product and a brilliant support.

/Per Hertz

1: I was uncertain if there were more straight-forward ways. However, the concept with hidden categories works, although it's tedious to create n x m customer fields (where is the copy into new button??? ).

2: Yup - excellent!

3: I thought of "Column Name" as in DB column, but you are right, the result displays nicely in the backend interface as well as in the mail to the shopkeeper.

Case dismissed - one happy HikaShop shop builder and one happy HikaShop owner later...

Thnx!
/Per