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 owe you a thank you for creating such a good product. It really is impressive how much info you have available on materials and general clay and glaze topics. So, Thanks! "
"As part of my technical studies module, I have been evaluating various glaze calculation programs. From a personal view I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. Subject to further evaluation over the next few weeks, particularly with regard to the background resources, I would recommend Insight to anyone interested in Ceramics even if they were not particularly concerned with glaze calculation, which they should be, and which obviously lies at the heart of the software."
"I am currently finishing my schooling, and will begin teaching in the fall. This program will be invaluable to me once I start teaching. Thank you for all the hard work you have done in putting all this information in one easy to use program. My instructors are of the "happy accident" school of glazing. They have done this for so many years that they are constantly tweaking the glazes and mixing new ones, most of which don't give consistent results. I think this program will be a Godsend to my further education in ceramics. "
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