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.
"Love the software! I never took chemistry - not even in high school. Yet, I can take those unity formulas from the Boraq pages (like lavender, butterscotch, the iron red) and create a recipe that actually works and looks real close to the pictures on the web pages. I have also converted GB recipes over to Boraq and it is hard to see any difference, except for 1 recipe."
"I'm having so much fun with this program that I'm not making pots I'm designing and fixing glazes!"
"I really love this software!"
"We have been using your software since I was a student in my second year. Since then, we've used it in our second year clay and glaze tech. class going on 19 years!"
"I've been using Insight for a couple of years now, and I absolutely love it. Thanks for writing such a great program and reference database. "
"I am already an fan of yours. I have visited the Digitalfire site before and it is one of my favorites. I particularly liked your clear glaze explanation. I was also going to ask your permision to reprint some of your web site, with a proper by-line of course, in my new catalog. I am very interested in your project, please let me know if I can be of any help."