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.
"We mixed your 20 X 5 gloss transparent and several other glazes to test. Over half of our 14 glaze test pieces were terrific! And even the one's that were not were indeed learning opportunities. We will continue to test them in combinations, different temps, longer soak times at the top, etc. Thanks again for a great, informative site and a great encouragement and confidence builder! We look forward to glaze firings with more confidence and excitement!"
"I think you have an exceptional product and it would be great for the students."
"I went to school for ceramics a few decades ago, but went to the wrong school as they did not provide glaze chemistry. My teacher would like to help me select a palette of premixed glazes to give me a quick start. I have chosen the route of learning the glaze chemistry on my own."
"Yes, thank you for that excellent advice. I have just finished assembling ingredients for mixing - but haven't yet had mixed anything but I'm living in this magical world in my head where I'll mix a test batch from a recipe from workshops that I've attended, fire it and it will be beautiful and I'll mix a larger batch and it will be beautiful...in the real world I'll most likely have different experiences from that - and I'm sure at some point I'll purchase insight!"
"Upon opening my dearly beloved program I get this message: Insight notification (N1) .. It would appear that I can manipulate a newly entered glaze recipe, save it and print it out as usual....recalling it is the problem. Thanks for your concern...it's just one more reason why I am so impressed with Insight. "
"Some of the glazes I've tried (from other recipe books) have worked while others have not. Kind of feels like flying an airplane without knowing what the controls do. I understand how to weigh and mix and am just learning about the different materials. To gain more information, I started researching glazes and how they work on the internet and came across your site. I want to be in control of the 'flying plane' as it were. So far I've had a few successful 'flights' but it was mostly luck. If I'm going to have a unique voice in my surface treatment, I'm going to need to know what to adjust to get the desired results. "