What to Do When Switching Bazi Charting Tools

Before switching to a different charting tool, the practical issue is not whether the new engine is better in general, but whether it can reproduce the same reference points you already rely on. The safest procedure is to treat the change as a controlled comparison rather than an immediate replacement.

换工具之前先固定三样东西

Three things should be fixed before any tool is replaced. The first is the eight characters of the natal chart, the 原局命盘. The second is the set of calendrical and timekeeping rules used by the old tool, meaning its 口径说明. The third is the list of conclusions you have already accepted from the old output.

The natal chart is the most important of the three because it is the shared basis for every later conclusion. The eight characters can be carried over one by one, exactly as they appear, without needing to re-derive them from the birth data. If the new tool produces the same eight characters, then at least the foundational layer is stable. If it does not, the difference has to be explained before any downstream interpretation is compared.

Keeping a written record of the old tool’s rules is equally necessary. Many apparent contradictions between tools are not interpretive at all; they come from differences in how the hour, day, month, or year boundary is assigned.

原局命盘

The 原局命盘 is the fixed reference. It consists of the four pillars: year, month, day, and hour, each with a heavenly stem and an earthly branch. Before changing tools, these eight characters should be written out plainly. They are the only part of the old output that can be transferred without re-evaluation.

Because the eight characters are the common foundation of all later analysis, any tool that cannot reproduce them under the same stated rules should be treated as operating under a different 口径. That does not mean the new tool is wrong, but it means its output cannot be merged casually with the old conclusions.

The eight characters should be taken from the original birth data as processed by the old tool, not from memory or from a partial screenshot. If the old tool displayed a corrected solar time or a different date boundary, those adjustments belong to the 口径说明, not to the raw birth record.

口径说明

The 口径说明 is the set of rules that determines how the birth time becomes a chart. Three points are especially relevant when moving between tools.

The first is how the 子时 is assigned to a day. Some systems treat the hour of 子 as belonging to the day that begins at midnight, while others assign the late 子 hour to the following day’s stem and branch. A difference here changes the day pillar, and therefore the whole chart.

The second is the boundary rule for the year pillar and the month pillar. The year pillar may change at the solar term 立春, or it may follow the lunar new year in systems that are not strictly solar-term based. The month pillar changes on the twelve 节, not on the first day of the lunar month. If the new tool uses a different boundary, the month stem and branch may shift even when the birth date looks unchanged.

The third is whether the tool applies a true solar time correction. If the old tool adjusted the clock time for longitude, that adjustment must be recorded. A tool that does not apply the correction may assign a different hour branch, especially for births near the boundary between two hours.

These rules should be written down before the old tool is no longer accessible. Without them, a later difference in the eight characters cannot be traced to its source.

已有的结论

The conclusions already accepted from the old tool should also be recorded, but not merely as final statements. For each conclusion, note the method of 取用神 that produced it. A conclusion that the useful god is a certain element or stem only becomes comparable if you know the reasoning path behind it.

If the old conclusion was based on a particular view of strength, season, or structure, write that down. If it came from a specific school’s treatment of the month command or the day master, note that as well. Otherwise, after the switch, it will be impossible to tell whether a difference between old and new conclusions comes from the chart itself, from the 口径, or from the interpretive method.

The point is not to preserve every past judgment as correct. It is to make the comparison possible. A conclusion without its method is only a result, and a result cannot be audited.

换过去之后的第一件事

After switching to the new tool, the first action should be to plot the same birth data once and place the resulting eight characters next to the old eight characters in a side-by-side comparison.

This is a mechanical step, not an interpretive one. The goal is to see whether the four pillars match exactly. If they do, the difference between tools is in the interpretive layer: the strength scoring, the useful god selection, the auxiliary stars, or the presentation. If they do not match, the difference is earlier, in the calendrical or timekeeping layer.

The comparison should be done with the same raw birth data, with no adjustment applied to make the new tool match the old chart. Any temptation to adjust the input to force the same eight characters should be resisted, because that would hide the actual rule difference.

口径不同时的处理

When a different 口径 causes the eight characters to be different, the first step is not to choose the newer tool by default. Instead, confirm which 口径 is consistent with the conclusions you already accepted.

If the old conclusions were built around a day pillar that assumes the late 子 hour belongs to the following day, and the new tool assigns it to the current day, the new chart may look plausible while silently invalidating every earlier judgment. In that case, the correct move is to recognize the mismatch and decide consciously whether to keep the old 口径 or switch the whole working framework.

The two sets of conclusions should not be mixed. Using half of the old chart and half of the new chart creates contradictions that cannot be traced later. A reading that takes the day master from one system and the useful god from another is not a synthesis; it is an unrecorded experiment.

If the new tool is eventually adopted, the switch should be total for that case: the chart, the rules, and the conclusions all come from the new 口径. Until then, the old conclusions remain valid only within the old rules.

This site’s engine states its 口径 on the site: it adopts the late 子时, the year pillar changes at 立春, the month pillar changes on the twelve 节, and no true solar time correction is applied. When comparing another tool against this one, those four points should be checked first.