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.
"Years ago, after studying all available books, and whatever you had on DigitalFire at the time, I had written a glaze program myself (in old Delphi and Paradox database) which I have later lost. At the time I did not appreciate enough yours as I wanted more for recording firings and tests. It was a bit slow and cumbersome and, obviously, lacked such a wonderful support like 4Sight. So now I can fully appreciate what you have done and am grateful for it."
"I had your program 15 years ago and it helped me so much with cone 10R glazes. I am back to clay again and looking forward to working on cone 6 electric. Thanks for your great work."
"The download and install went perfect which I enjoyed ;-) . I find it very expensive to keep buying all the various components of the recipes. It would be nice to actually understand what the ingredients do and learn how to substitute a smaller subset of ingredients for the desired results. Hence the interest in your product! There is a lot to learn and it looks like the software coupled with the Magic of Fire book would be a structured path to meet this goal."
"It is about bloody time, the kids expect this sort of information to be on computers and I might get a bit of peace now and again."
"I sure am enjoying working with my new Insight software. If nothing else, it gives me a way to organize my recipes--- previously I was using Excel. I have gotten great help from the effortless calculation of silica:alumina ratios for figuring surface quality."
"I must compliment you on the development of INSIGHT. It is a pleasure to work with the programme."