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.
"Well, I must tell you that you are currently my hero and I am spreading the word about INSIGHT to any of the potters I know that will listen, (although I must confess that I think many get scared to death when I talk about glaze chemistry.)"
" I have been using Insight to get smooth, matt glazes without crazing on various sculpture clays for cone 10, 6 and 03. I also use Insight to substitute Canadian materials for the English ones in my glaze recipes. Insight seems to be a robust program and I am glad that I chose this one. But I still am leaning how to use it fully. Also, I find the educational section of your website informative and it is very generous of you to share your expertise with the the rest of us. Thank you so much for your kind assistance."
"The software and the lessons are fascinating...thank you for all the good information."
"I .. have been running it ever since 1995 on Windows 95 and then Windows 98. I've just updated to Windows XP .. What are my options for accessing this wonderful program again and hopefully saving any data I had before...all my recipes etc?"
"You are truly an exceptional person to deal with the two universes of Windows and Mac, and the idiosyncrasies of each. I do not follow the logic of the Windows users except, maybe that that is the way they have always done it ... Just as I have always been an Apple user and that set my preferences ... my hat is off to you!!!"
"The current problems that prompted me to look for software are not exotic. Cornwall stone is $84 USD, G-200 is $14, so how much of what can we substitute to convert our favorite matt blue ^10 glaze? Why do some glazes craze sometimes and not others? Besides that I find the chemistry fascinating. We have recipes that work very well. I'd like to understand why. The math I find tedious; I did similar analysis for a course on ruminant nutrition, solving for protein, energy, calcium and potassium. Insight will allow me to explore the chemistry without spending so much time on the calculations."