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 thought that I knew something about glazes but talking to Ron Roy was a very pleasant yet humbling experience. He is the reason that I purchased INSIGHT. I've been using a friends INSIGHT program for the last 10 months and think its terrific. It has changed the way I teach glaze calculations and has made the empirical method muchmore accessible to my students."
"Between you and the guys that wrote "Mastering Cone 6 Glazes" I have been having great success with my pottery. After 20 years of making functional ware successfully it has been refreshing to be able to make my work even that much better. I use the liner glaze you developed and it is so consistent!"
"I did a trial of digitalfire about a year ago and loved it. I seem to have a block to really getting it when I read it in books, but have been very drawn to the way that you communicate and feel as though i might be able to actually learn something from you!! "
"I want to thank you for making the Insight upgrades available free of charge. The improvements to Insight are very much appreciated. The on line site continue to be a valued source of ceramic information. "
"I did use local materials available in my country, Czech republic, Europe. I did recalculate few of the recipes with the help of the Insight. I am really excited about the possibility to make almost the same looking glaze with different materials!"
"I mostly work with crystalline glazes. All the European potters speak in terms of Seger formulas so I have to become proficient with the program if I am to communicate with them."