Mandala

Very good and straightforward approach, Doug.

You would draw the stellation (star pattern) with simple lines at the right angles, then intersect them with circles and then use a Pathfinder. That way you get custom guides that can be snapped to. Then all that is left to do is fit other circles into the space which you could do manually or by using e.g. the circle from two points in Astute's plug-ins or for that matter CAD tools. And of course if you want to go super-nerdy on this you can always create a script. I used to dabble with such parametric patterns a lot back in my After Effects hayday using expressions...

Mylenium