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 sure am enjoying working with my new Insight software. If nothing else, it gives me a way to organize my recipes--- previously I was using Excel. I have gotten great help from the effortless calculation of silica:alumina ratios for figuring surface quality."
"It's great."
"Hats off sir! Extremely well done videos on tutorials. I have never never seen such fine and as detailed work any where. Congratulations! Keep it up."
"I'm glad you understand this stuff so well. You have done an amazing job of keeping the software moving forward, and for the most part, very transparent."
"I am exploring the software today and learning a lot. I am just getting back to making pottery in my retirement. I am determined to take advantage of the wonderful communication advances that have been made since I was a youngster. The software illuminates much of the rote learning I remember from student days."
"I'm actually a trained chemist, I specialised in ceramic Chemistry before I moved over to bio and Forensic. I think Insight is a great tool for any ceramic chemist, it's great that we don't have to faff about developing our own spreadsheets!!! I used it all the time when I took my doctorate years ago. It's been a while.... so I really need to get to know the programme again. "