The KUA number is used to tell you what the prevailing influences were during the year you were born, much like the Western Astrological Sign. The KUA number will tell you which I Ching Trigram and Element you were born under and what your beneficial and problematic compass directions are. It is calculated based on the year, according to the Nine Star Ki astrology calendar system, you were born and on your gender.

What is a Nine Star Ki number and how is it different from a KUA number?

The calculation for Nine Star Ki numbers and for KUA numbers are identical for Males, and so they are equivalent. However, Nine Star Ki astrology uses the same calculation for Females as it does for Males, so, a Female's Nine Star Ki number would be different than her KUA number. For most uses, it is best to go by the standard KUA calculation, particularly when reviewing beneficial or problematic directions, elements etc. The advice on moving, renovations and on the Nine Ki Chart available under the Advice menu are based on Nine Star Ki astrology, so, it may be beneficial for women to calculate their KUA number as a Male before running these reports. This will ensure that the standard Nine Star Ki calculation was used in the analysis of these charts.

What does Adjusted Birth Year mean?

The KUA number calculation is based on the year, according to the Nine Star Ki astrology calendar system, you were born and on your gender. The Nine Star Ki astrology new year begins on or around February 4th, therefore, if you were born before February 4th, then your Nine Star Ki birth year is most likely 1 year earlier than your birth year by Western standards. For example, if you were born on January 8th, 1958, your Western birth year is 1958, but your Nine Star Ki or Adjusted birth year is 1957. It is this number that is used in calculating the KUA number.

My Animal Sign Appears to be Incorrect

Most people are familiar with the Chinese calendar which has the New Year starting anywhere between the middle of January to late February. However, in this software, the charts that utilize the information about the year you were born and the animal sign you were born under are based on Nine Star Ki astrology and so we have used the Nine Star Ki calendar system when calculating these values. If you don't agree with the adjusted birth year or the Nine Ki/KUA number that was calculated for you, you may type in a birthday which is before or after February 4th to adjust your birth year in the direction you choose. Or, you may simply type in the Nine Ki/KUA number that you prefer and click Save. Remember, don't click Calculate, as that will replace whatever you've typed into the Nine Ki/KUA number box.

I tried to create a bathroom inside of my bedroom, and now the bathroom has disappeared. What happened?

The floor plan does not support rooms within rooms. Instead, they should be laid out as one room next to the other room. In your case, the bedroom should end where the bathroom begins. As to where your bathroom went, it is probably hidden underneath your bedroom in the floor plan. Look in the list and see if you see the bathroom listed. If so, highlight it. That should make it appear in the floor plan. If it does, you may drag it to a location where it will not overlap another room. If you are unable to see the bathroom to drag it, then highlight it in the list and click the Remove Room button to delete it. Then, recreate the bathroom by clicking the Add Room button.

How can I save my reports to a file or e-mail them to family or friends?

Since most of the reports include both graphics and text it would require significant changes to the way we create these reports to support saving them in a format such as PDF - which can handle both text and graphics well. We will try to include this functionality in future versions of Great! Feng Shui. In the mean time, we have found an alternate solution that will allow you to save your reports as PDF files using another vendor's product.

There is a product called pdf995 (version 5.4) which is available for download here: http://site4.pdf995.com/download.html

When this product is installed, it sets up a "virtual printer" on your computer called PDF995. If you select this printer to print your report to, then you will be prompted to enter a file name. Once you have done this, your report will be saved to that filename in PDF format. You may then e-mail the report to anyone who has an Adobe Acrobat reader (available for free from Adobe, though most computers already have one of these installed). The same company offers a product called pdfEdit995 (version 4.2) which will allow you to edit the reports after they have been saved in PDF format. This is particularly useful to Feng Shui practitioners who may want to personalize the reports with the name of their practice.

The pdf995 product is fully functional and may be downloaded for free from the site listed above, however until you have paid the $9.95 registration fee, each time you "print", a web page will be displayed reminding you to register the product.

I get an error when I run the program that says Error 13 Type Mis-Match. What is causing this?

Great! Feng Shui was developed under the Regional Settings for English (United States). We found that people who are using a Regional Setting which uses a comma instead of a period for the decimal place separator were encountering this problem. The latest file available for download (Nov. 25th 2002) solves this problem. We hope that dates and any decimal numbers used by the program have been handled. However, we can't guarantee it. If you find that you are getting this error even after downloading this latest GFS.ZIP file, please write to the support number listed on the Contact page and please include information about which Regional Settings your computer is set to. If possible, we will adjust the program to also work with your regional settings. To look up your regional settings, click on the Start Button, then Settings, then Control Panel. Then, double-click the Regional Settings icon. Your setting will be selected in the list.