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.
"My professor personally would rather "concentrate on glaze application and not on calculation". Not that he is against calculation ... he offered to .. let me set it all up and learn it and the calculation process then teach it to him and other students as a research project... he means more like a biology student spending 4 months researching the sexual habits of the horned African beetle ... The more I talk to people the more I find there are many many folks who want to know glaze calc and cant seem to figure it out."
"All I have to say is "Bless You!" I am a beginning potter (just 2 1/2 years of community ed) and glazes are a complete mystery to me. The professional potters I have come to know use the "hit & miss" method of glaze formulation, and the community college I attend hasn't the funding or space to educate re: glazes! In my previous life (before marriage & children) I was a chemistry major. The lack of science used by local potters has had me completely baffled--no one has ever cared to find out WHY their glazes were performing poorly!!!"
"Thanks for the response and I will continue to learn. It appears that I need to set aside serious time to learn this. And as a chemist myself, I see the great value in it."
"I love this site, this program...and I must say...in my 30 plus years in this field I have met only a few very very authentic people...you are definitely one of them. My hat is off to you for working and improving this software and really caring that it works for people!"
"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."
"Thanks for making a nice program and having a nice website."