The series outlines Da Vinci's desire to produce a design that would be implemented at a later date. His notes would attempt to guide the architects so that his original ideas would be realised. It must be hard for anyone in the design industry to hand over their plans to those respnsible for implementing them.
Throughout his series of study sketches, Da Vinci would experiment with two main features - the exterior of the dome plus the bird's eye view plan for the ground floor layout.
It is the overhead layout which seems to be most in the mind of the artist as he puts together this composition, formulating several ideas into this single sheet of paper. When you study this series of drawings you may conclude that Leonardo da Vinci went to extraordinary lengths over even the finest of detail, repeating several items across many drawings.
Those looking to understand more about the artistic processes used by the Renaissance masters would be wise to study the various elements of this series by Da Vinci and examine how he addresses different parts of the overall composition.
There is much to learn from the Renaissance draughtsmen, see also drawings by Raphael, Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer.