Newbie: How to make a window

I am trying to build my own house, but I am having difficulties with the windows. How do you usually make those?

Making a hole in the wall seems to be a waste, suddenly I would have to use 4 prims just for the wall, rather than only one.

I would really appreciate any hint and tips I can get.

You can cut a hole in a single prim with the hollow tool, but your window will be in the center of the wall.

The most realistic approach is to build walls around a space, using four prims, but you already figured that method out.

Another idea is to make the entire wall a window by applying transparency to the inside.

And, finally, you can create a texture that has an alpha channel window in it and just use a solid wall and apply the windowed wall texture to it.

Since this is SL, be creative, experiment with it, try something you cant do in RL. Most importantly, have fun with it. A lot of the fun of SL can be in creating things. Dont be afraid to do it differently later on, build and rebuild.

Using the hollowing is probably the best way. (by best I mean easiest. A texture with a window in it would be the most prim-efficient) You should be able to make a full height wall, hollow it for a window, and then adjust the hollow size and the length of the wall to get the window to just the right dimensions. You will only need to fill in a few extra walls on either side, if you need, for a maximum of three prims being used.