The PDF Manual.
Modified: November 20, 2021
Download it from the Files panel in your Insight-live.com account or from the home page at https://digitalfire.com (current downloads only include the program file, manual, starter recipe, materials - overrides data is built in).
We moved functionality to a private account at Insight-Live.com - because people now expect to get at their data from any device anywhere. And for our survival. Ceramic lab work is much bigger than glaze chemistry, it is a physical world where testing, observation, record-keeping are vital. Insight-Live is about maintaining that data. Its recipes share pictures, they have firing schedules, notes, development history, testing data, links, they belong to projects. And they accumulate into the thousands and are easy to find and compare.
Desktop Insight, by default, opens and saves recipes to its INSIGHTDATA.DB recipe database file (that file is in your documents/insight folder, it can be uploaded and imported into Insight-live). If Desktop Insight does not find the INSIGHTDATA.DB file on startup, it imports, into its database, all the recipe files (e.g. RCP, RCX) it finds in your documents/insight/recipe folder (it does not erase the original files, but no longer uses them). From then on, when you choose File -> Open (not File -> Open File System) you open recipes from its database (using the Recipe Database Window). When you Save you save to the database. See page 94 of the manual for more information.
Because you have to be able to compare ten recipes side-by-side. For physics as well as chemistry. And people need to be able to find thousands on any device from anywhere.
Insight FAQ
There is a direct relationship between the way ceramic glazes fire and their chemistry. Insight is a calculation tool anyone can use to learn and harness the power of glaze chemistry.
Without glaze chemistry you'll never really have control and you could be a slave to your suppliers or the trafficing in recipes that never work.
Overwhelmed by glaze chemistry? Try starting here.
"I use a lot of commecial glazes, but am becoming more and more interested in developing my own palette... this has led me to look at the various calculation programs out there."
"I remember when I was in school learning glaze calculation, we would have been happy with a simple calculator. I studied with Peter Sohngen who is a graduate of Alfred from the Daniel Rhodes era. All of your information and program should help a lot of people, if they care to know how important all this really is. My fear is; that many schools and so called teachers do not have a clue and are happy in the dark. There are a lot of really bad glaze recipes being passed around."
"I started hunting for more information and that was when I discovered Insight and I haven't looked back. I am not a chemist, but I have enough advanced quantitative training from other areas that, with the help of your excellent videos and reference material, I was able to jump into Insight and more generally glaze chemistry feet first. Thanks again for a great piece of software and your continued support of it."
"I've been really happy with the program - very enlightening."
"I went to school for ceramics a few decades ago, but went to the wrong school as they did not provide glaze chemistry. My teacher would like to help me select a palette of premixed glazes to give me a quick start. I have chosen the route of learning the glaze chemistry on my own."
"I was thinking when it was I first talked to you and bought the program... early 90s I think. I have used it a lot, and appreciate the work you have put into it. It has been very useful over the years. Thank You."