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 xxx software, but Insight is much much better, in allowing us to modify and observe. Not to mention the materials database and all the video tutorials you put together. My favorite is the one about whiting and LOI. Even though your tutorial is about how to use the SW, it has a lot of great chemistry information, so it both a class and a tutorial! It was really mind blowing to understand about the LOI, now I understand why some of our glazes that have high organic content burn out (like whiting and Ash glazes) create cool effect when you layer another glaze on top...."
"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!! "
"Very satisfied."
"Glad to see you are still around and going strong. When we (Judy and I) started using this program in the 80s it was just a few steps above DOS commands. Now it is smooth and polished."
"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 recently got LEVEL 1 and love it. Now I would like to upgrade to LEVEL 2 ..."