Quick start guide to free Zi Wei Chart !

How to use Zi Wei Chart Free Edition

Navigate to Zi Wei Chart aka Purple Star astrology hyperlink e.g. https://ziweichart.com  

English is default locale and we support multiple locales e.g. traditional and simplified Chinese.  Key in the birth details.  Birth date are in mm/dd/yyyy format.  There is support for date range from 1885 - 2100 to help you in analysis of ancient charts from old books.

This is the landing page.  Click Generate Chart to progress to next page and you will be in chart view.

Useful options at the Chart view page

For free charting, we pay attention to the 3 commonly used features of Zi Wei chart.

User view shows birth records.  There are additional features for free charting, namely editing the user's information, chart printing.  The Privacy option hides birth details. 

Click on the firth button to reveal more Zi Wei Dou Shu stars.  

Revamped twins feature

The most interesting feature is Twins for the Free edition.

Click the Twins button and an indicator will appear next the button to serve as visual cue with chart changes for twins.  

Zi Wei Chart supports up to 3 twins from your perspective or 4 twin children from the parent's perspective.  You can visit my previous blog entry to see more screen captures of Twins' feature.

More free UI enhancements

For 2026, I made another UI enhancement.  When two stems in single palace sends outgoing transformers to opposing palace, I used a UI trick to enhance the effects below and labelled the transformations!  This is recent cosmetic change for the clunky application 8)

Decade and annual with monthly charts

Zi Wei Chart supports decade, annual and monthly chart details out of the box in the free tier.  I design this UI in 2013-2014 era to view all dynamic time aspects in single pane of glass.  This design gives me flexibility to added content and the design worked perfectly at the paid palace perspective feature.

To see the dynamic time aspects in the chart, follow the steps below

1. Click on the range as shown in screen capture.

2. Click on the lunar year of interest.

3. The annual and monthly charts will appear at top right hand corner.  

Four Transformers energy flow

In this variant of Zi Wei Dou Shu, the 4 transformers take center stage.  Click on the stems and you will see the 4 transformers' energy flow throughout the chart.  To remove the lines, simply click any palace.

Support for San He variant stars

We support beyond 18 Zi Wei Dou Shu stars, bringing the number up to 38 to prevent clutter.  There is no compelling reason to analyse all the 108 stars to be effective.  38 is a good number.  This contrast with the Southeast Asian Si Hua schools who uses 18 stars for commercial reason$.

Feedback

This code porting exercise took me 2 months of back breaking work and numerous user interface experiments to bring elements of the Windows application for another platform.  There are some quirks but I welcome your comments and will fix them as soon as possible.  

Please drop an email to zwdsflying@yahoo.com if you are interested in the paid edition of this software. 

The $6 monthly subscription pays for the following.

1. Hosting charges

2. Allows you to save your charts for later retrieval

3. Basic stars and aspects description

4. Palace Perspectives

You can refer to my earlier blog for the paid tier features.

The annual subscription has a 10% discount (SGD) $64.

The Advanced edition is ready but will be launched at later stage.

CK Cheng

Spring 2026

Zi Wei Chart ready for beta launch

Announcing the beta release of Zi Wei.  I revamped the palace perspectives option.  After making careful changes to the user interface, I found a nice place for palace perspective.

The new screen capture shows the Chinese UI.

Proposed pricing for the new application.

Contact zwdsflying@yahoo.com for more details.

Added support for minor stars

 I am happy to announce that I ported support for additional minor stars to the Zi Wei Chart from clunky Windows application.

The next screen capture shows the minor stars in Traditional Chinese locale.

As my main effort is to complete the porting work, I will provide rationale for including the minor stars.  Unlike the Northern Si Hua schools, the stubborn Southern Si Hua variants do not support minor stars for commercial reason$.

Added basic palace and stars information!

 Added certain features for beginners.  Basic stars and palace information for quick references.

The basic star's information is included for convenience.

In next few sessions, I will show you a revamped Palace Perspective that I was talking about in previous section.  Stay tuned.

For users of the clunky app, you can be assured this iteration surpasses the clone's partial implementation.

New Twins user interfaces - up to 3 twins !!

 I was experimenting several user interface ideas to support multiple twins.

After toying with 4 designs, I have decided on this interface.  Now there is support not just for a pair of twins but up to 3 of them!

In the old clunky application, I used a checkbox to denote twins.  In this refresh, I used some web UI tricks to allow users to toggle between twins.  See the screen capture below, a picture speaks a thousand words.

To avoid confusion, when you save the data, take note of the twin's number and input the number in the name!  This is a nifty mechanical trick.  

With this addition, I have surpassed the clone's implementation of the Si Hua Flying Stars web application. 

In addition, I took the opportunity to allow users to plot ancient charts, from 1885 to as recent as 2100.

I will post more screen captures of new features, stay tuned!

Updates on the Si Hua Zi Wei application - Localisation

 

It is quite an irony, today when I added support for Simplified and Traditional Chinese.  I will be adding other Western European languages soon if time is kind to me.  I took the opportunity to clean up the localisation and we see how it goes.

The next enhancement is UI related.  

If two stems in single palace sends outgoing transformers to opposing palace, I used a UI trick to enhance the effects below and labelled the transformation!  This is recent cosmetic change for the clunky application 8)

In the good old workstation days, graphics or system programming in C or C++ was interesting work after the dark ages of the Assembler.  Web application was one area that you tried to avoid given the horrible slop from the Javascript folks and till today, it continues to stump me that chaps are using hand phones to view 12 palace charts.  We live in a strange world.

Next UI challenge in the horrible world of web application, how to plot a chart for a customer who has triplets 8)

Before you pay money for someone to spoonfed you, put on your thinking cap.  The idea is simple, think of Siblings and set that palace to be Life aspect for your twin doppelganger .  

The other method uses Palace Interchange.  I will briefly describe palace interchange in another blog, yes, free of charge.

When I first introduced the Twin feature in the clunky Si Hua application 10 years ago, I am actually puzzled that some con$ultant wanted to put that nugget in a paid course.  So I guessed I just busted another money making opportunity for another folk, oops.

Launching the Si Hua Zi Wei software online !

Some great news, I have ported the clunky Si Hua software into an experimental web application for Si Hua Zi Wei.

Currently I am reviewing different methods to plot the monthly chart, therefore if the monthly aspects looks weird, do not be alarmed.  

I will probably implement Rick Lim's Dou Jun method.  Rick Lim is one of those rare blokes who mastered the San He and Si Hua systems of Zi Wei Dou Shu.  You can visit the link to support our local author's third book if you are a Si Hua fan.

It is to my understanding that he is one of the strongest Zi Wei masters that I ever meet.

To fund the hosting fees, a token subscription may be necessary, but casual chart plotting will be made free.  

If you have any proposal for the fees, please send an email to zwdsflying@yahoo.com

New features will be introduced in Windows version to improve the weakness of the Si Hua system, stay tuned.