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 taught glaze research for years, (yes we used Insight quite a bit!) .. I used 'Insight' to successfully convert Tom Colemans copper red recipe into UK ingredients. "
"I've pretty much put the program through several calculations and it is very elegant, easy to use. Best of all for us Apple folks, it works on OSX."
"I'm trying to develop a group of cone 6 glazes. I did have knowledge of Glaze Chemistry to manually do the glazes. Anyway I'm up and running with INSIGHT. I'm impressed!"
"Now if only you were here sitting beside me to help me effectively use this powerful weapon you have supplied me with! :-) But I guess getting to know its capabilities is half the fun. I am very excited and have already started loading some local recipes that I want to start analyzing/tweaking."
"I am the only one using INSIGHT, almost everyone here lives under the influence of the Glaze Dragon. I am beginning to change their minds but it is taking me a lot of time... but one step at a time. It is incredible how a big company still trust the old way of formulating glazes. Thanks to your program and book Magic of Fire, I have been able to develop, correct and optimize glazes according to our clients needs! "
"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."