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 download and install went perfect which I enjoyed ;-) . I find it very expensive to keep buying all the various components of the recipes. It would be nice to actually understand what the ingredients do and learn how to substitute a smaller subset of ingredients for the desired results. Hence the interest in your product! There is a lot to learn and it looks like the software coupled with the Magic of Fire book would be a structured path to meet this goal."
"I tried your glaze program some time ago and didn't buy it because I didn't know enough about glaze chemistry. I evaluated 3 glaze programs and liked yours the best. I really want to start making more of my glazes. Last weekend I went to a glaze chemistry workshop with Paul Lewing. Now I think I know enough about glaze chemistry to purchase your glaze program."
"I've recently purchased your software, and am totally blown away by the completeness of the package. The tutorial is incredible, I've learned so much from it already! This will be invaluable to me; glazes have always been somewhat mysterious, and I've relied far too heavily on the Kiln Gods. I'm looking forward to completing the tutorial and start experimenting.... As to the software, as an old Foxpro programmer myself, I can appreciate what it took to do what you did."
"I solved a shivering problem with a low expansion/high expansion frit system as recommended at Digitalfire so I bought INSIGHT."
"The Ceramics Materials database is wonderful! I'm just learning how to make glazes and clay by hand and this will be invaluable."
"I continue to use Insight almost daily and it is a fantastic tool. "