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.
"For years I have told any potter who would listen that INSIGHT completely changed my knowledge of glazes and gave me an understanding and control I never thought I would have. I can't thank you enough!"
"Hi Tony, I just would like to thank you for this wonderful program you have developed. It is such a great tool. I am going to try Insight live."
"I am getting better at using Insight for what it is intended in the ability to select different materials to provide the various oxides and to compare them to target glazes. I have also used Insight to review recipes to decide whether I want to try them or not, given the likely characteristics and avoided wasting my time with poorly constructed recipes."
"I am Ceramist, raku-ist, and Ceramic teacher at Ceramic Training Center, a government sponsored institution, working in a very poor and fairly isolated spot in Patagonian region in Argentina, where there is no possibility to get new educational materials. My main work is the training of general people about glazes, pottery, clay body etc. INSIGHT is excellent, and VERY useful for clasroom use."
"On the clay side of things - I used Insight to calibrate a glaze substituting Strontium for Barium. Worked out great! Could not have done it without looking at the chemistry. Would have ended up an oxide imbalance if had just done a 1 for 1 replacement."
"Thanks for the response and I will continue to learn. It appears that I need to set aside serious time to learn this. And as a chemist myself, I see the great value in it."