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.
"I have had wonderful success with INSIGHT...one supplier here said that what 'little' practical benefit I would get from INSIGHT would not even justify the initial cost..I always preferred to veiw glazes from the oxide viewpoint and as a 'total package' as opposed to base and additions, and with the aid of your program I was able to review and update my chemistry knowledge quickly..and was able to produce and modify glaze to suit my needs efficiently with little time or material wasted. The excellent results I have had has definitely changed their tune. She called BBS 3/20/95 read info. Downloaded info 5/21/95."
"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!"
"First of all I have purchased Insight and it works great, thanks. I would like a cd of the (online) tutorials."
"Thank you so much for creating this program. I can see how useful it can be."
"Have had the total package since September 2001, and love it. Work with it constantly. Trying to learn everything I can about revising to cone 6."
"I talked my employer into buying your INSIGHT SOFTWARE. THANK YOU. It has helped me solve many problems by adjusting glaze chemistry."