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 like your software. My background is engineering so I am comfortable with all the chemistry and the program sure does all the work. INSIGHT has been a big help!"
"I have been working with clay for 3 decades and this is the first time I feel that I have really begun to get a grip on what glaze materials do. It's one thing to read about the materials in a book but theory and reality often didn't line up for me. The best part was learning as much as we did by limiting our base glaze. So thanks for your book, Insight and Five Twenties!"
"I have been using Insight since the 1980's. I have used other programs and I like yours best."
"We're in dental porcelain business. I will need some time to practice the INSIGHT porgram and digest information from your website. Thanks for putting up the great software program and resourceful website."
"I've run hundreds of glaze tests without the aid of software and while I haven't done badly I'm definitely finished with that approach. After modifying a couple of Pete Pinnell's Tomato Red glazes with different materials side-by-side in both INISGHT and xx, the logic of how you've designed your program really impressed me."
"I think I have always been a bit of an emissary for Insight, on Clayart and elsewhere, and will continue to do so. I have always preferred Insight over the other glaze-calc programs, and I enjoy teaching it to my students and seeing the way it helps open up the world of technical ceramics."