bmike, the placement of the windows was a result of the wheel, but it's not as if the wheel gives me an option of 2 or 3 heights to place the window. There are probably hundreds of different places I could put the thing by using intersection points, I chose these paricular location because it was aesthetically pleasing, and because that particular location seemed reasonable. The width and height of the windows was not laid out according to the 'master wheel' at all, but rather it was made to fit the space between the posts and still create the desired proportions. If you look closely at the drawing, you can see each window is slightly overlaid with a star of David, that is how I determined its proportions. I made a new circle for each window. In reality when doing this on the completed structure, the doors and windows will be set inside of frames to keep them at consistent heights and widths, so as to avoid the irregularity of the posts. You are right that in most projects all of this would be unnecessary, but like I said it's just something I wanted to do in keeping with the medieval theme of the design. Somehow having vinyl clad Andersen Windows or some such would just be out of place, although certainly a whole lot easier!

The wheel as I use it really is not as commanding as it may seem. It's no different than if you would use graph or grid paper to draw a building design. There you are stuck with the lines of the graph, so how is being stuck with the literally thousands of lines that the wheel can give me any worse or more blind? Look at my layout drawings with the wheel and its lines in the background.

By the way, I foresee the question arising of if you have these supposed thousands of possibilities, how is geometry any better, or how are you staying geometric, or some such. The answer to that is quite simple, some lines are better than others! The best lines of the wheel, what I call 'Category 1', are those lines that are simply connectors between circle overlap points -the lines you see drawn on my basic diagram- especially those that connect opposing or reflected points. These lines are the ones I like to use for the basis of my designs "Category 2" lines are still good, these are the lines made by intersection of 'category 1' lines. These are what I like to use, for example, to establish roof lines. 'category 3'lines are those that are formed by connecting intersections of category 2 lines, or intersections of category 1 lines and circles. Category 4 lines are formed by the intersection of building lines (when they don't fit into a previous category) and any other category 3 or higher line. And the list goes on and on... It sounds complicated but it's really all quite natural and fairly obvious. That's the system I use, which I think yields a good combination of limitation (because limitation yields strength) and freedom.

And that last point is an important point Limitation yields Strength and I could also say limitation yields beauty