AstroWatch can layer more than one chart on the same wheel — from a quick natal-plus-transit overlay right on the Dashboard, up to four independently configured rings in the Expanded Chart View. This page covers both, plus the presets, the Free/Pro split, and how to read the Ring Legend once more than one ring is active.
Two ways to layer charts
There are two separate controls for this, at two different depths:
-
1
The Dashboard's Bi-wheel toggle
One click, on the chart toolbar, natal-plus-live-transit only. Covered in full on Reading the Dashboard — recapped below.
-
2
Configure Wheels, in the Expanded Chart View
Up to four rings, each independently assigned a chart type — natal, transit, a progression, a planet return, a synastry partner, a composite, a Davison chart or a harmonic. This is the deeper tool, and where the Free/Pro line actually sits.
The Dashboard Bi-Wheel toggle
Bi-wheel only appears once a natal chart is loaded, and only for the Wheel (Western) style — switching to a square Vedic style hides it, since those layouts are single-chart only. Turning it on overlays a second ring — the live transit sky at your default transit location — around the static natal wheel, and adds Natal/Transit sub-tabs to the Planetary Positions card so you can read either body list. The plain Aspects toggle is replaced by an Aspects ▾ menu with three modes:
- Transit → Natal (the default) — aspects from the outer transit ring to the inner natal ring.
- Transit only — aspects among the transit planets themselves.
- Natal only — aspects among the natal planets themselves, same as with bi-wheel off.
- 1Bi-wheel toggle — Natal and Transit layers both active, drawing inner and outer rings.
- 2Aspect Source — Transit → Natal is the default; Transit Only and Natal Only narrow the aspect grid to one ring.
Configure Wheels in the Expanded Chart View
Click Expand on the chart toolbar, then Configure Wheels to slide out the Chart Layers panel. It holds four ring slots — slot order is the ring order, innermost first — each with its own enable toggle, an accent colour, a chart-type dropdown and a target dropdown (a profile, a date, a planet, a harmonic number, whatever the chosen chart type needs). Drag a slot up or down in the list to reorder which ring sits inside which. A read-only Single-Wheel / Bi-Wheel / Tri-Wheel / Quad-Wheel indicator row along the top just reflects how many rings are currently enabled — it's a status display, not a separate control.
- 1Ring slot — enable toggle, accent colour dot, chart-type and target dropdowns; drag the handle to reorder.
- 2Apply — commits the slot configuration and redraws the wheel with the new ring count.
Presets
A presets dropdown at the top of the panel resets all four slots to a known configuration in one click:
| Preset | What it sets up |
|---|---|
| Standard Single-Wheel | Natal only — whatever the page was showing when you expanded it. |
| Standard Bi-Wheel | Natal inner, live transit outer. |
| Natal + Planet Return Bi-Wheel | Natal inner, a planet-return chart outer (defaults to the Sun — a Solar Return). |
| Custom Quad-Wheel (Pro) | All four rings enabled and blank, ready for you to assign each one. |
| Synastry (Pro) | Two natal wheels — your active profile, plus a second profile you pick. |
| Composite (Pro) | A single midpoint-composite wheel between two profiles. |
| Davison (Pro) | A single midpoint-date (Davison) wheel between two profiles. |
| Harmonic (Pro) | A single harmonic wheel derived from the active natal (5th harmonic by default). |
Five of the eight presets carry a PRO badge; picking one on Free reopens the same upgrade prompt as any other locked control.
Free vs. Pro
The Ring Legend
Once more than one ring is active, a small Ring Legend shows a coloured dot per ring, matching each ring's accent colour on the wheel itself, plus a count like 2 / 4. It's a fast way to tell which drawn ring is which without opening the Chart Layers panel again.
- 1Ring Legend — one coloured dot per active ring, with a 4 / 4 count; the colours match the wheel's ring accents.
Exporting your layout
Whatever's on the stage — one ring or four — the Export button on the Expanded Chart View's toolbar turns it into a PDF report or copies every chart table to the clipboard as plain text. Export itself is available on Free too; Free-tier PDFs carry a watermark. The full export workflow — templates, page size, wheel style in the export — gets its own page once the Reports & Interpretations section ships.
What's next
That covers every way to put more than one chart on screen at once. From here, the natural next stop is the Vedic toolkit — Nakshatras, Vimshottari Daśā and the divisional charts (vargas) that the style badge and presets above both reference: Nakshatras & Padas →