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 have had excellent results lowering the expansion in the existing glaze formulas enabling me to use a much stronger clay body and eliminating the fracturing after the glaze fire. We now get a 100% yield compared to the 75% to 80% yield from the beginning of the company almost 20 years ago."
"I was very pleased with myself that I could take your instructions, and sit down with the computer, and end up with a glaze that is very pleasing and reliable with many colors."
"First of all I have purchased Insight and it works great, thanks. I would like a cd of the (online) tutorials."
"I have been very impressed with the software thus far as I begin to explore its features as well as your considerable expertise. My eventual goal is to simplify the glaze situation in the studio by employing Frit based glazes overall and/or simple base glazes that can cover a reasonable range of colors and provide consistent reliability (and safety) to the beginning student ... and avoid any toxic elements that would compromise safety in the studio or in the fired, functional, piece. "
"I am a teacher at a university in Germany. Glazes are my love. I spend 30 years in glaze research mainly about the question how to adjust glaze-recepies to my raw materials, my clay and my kiln with the help of Insight. Now I have a very good unterstanding about handling the Seger-Formular with a special view on eutectic mixtures."
"I am always on the brink of ordering of Insight, and I know I will at some time. I know many people who use your program and quite successfully. I am going to take time to download some of the programs available and move around in them. I know that you are an expert so I expect that Insight is excellent."