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.
"The installation of the software went with no problems. I am a fan of your work and have heard many good comments about INSIGHT. I am going to get it to help me make the best cone 6 glazes with the raw materials I can find."
"I was very pleased with myself that I could take your instructions, and sit down with the computer, and end up with a glaze that is very pleasing and reliable with many colors."
"The trial license on my version of Insight is expiring in a couple of days, and I am hopelessly addicted to the software ... Insight is an invaluable piece of software."
"All I have to say is "Bless You!" I am a beginning potter (just 2 1/2 years of community ed) and glazes are a complete mystery to me. The professional potters I have come to know use the "hit & miss" method of glaze formulation, and the community college I attend hasn't the funding or space to educate re: glazes! In my previous life (before marriage & children) I was a chemistry major. The lack of science used by local potters has had me completely baffled--no one has ever cared to find out WHY their glazes were performing poorly!!!"
"I'm trying to develop a group of cone 6 glazes. I did have knowledge of Glaze Chemistry to manually do the glazes. Anyway I'm up and running with INSIGHT. I'm impressed!"
"I have been working with clay for 3 decades and this is the first time I feel that I have really begun to get a grip on what glaze materials do. It's one thing to read about the materials in a book but theory and reality often didn't line up for me. The best part was learning as much as we did by limiting our base glaze. So thanks for your book, Insight and Five Twenties!"