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 to say, you have done a fabulous job with this software...at least from what I can see so far. Very robust options. I wish I would hav known about this in the late 90s, when I was having a go at making pots professionally."
"I had your program 15 years ago and it helped me so much with cone 10R glazes. I am back to clay again and looking forward to working on cone 6 electric. Thanks for your great work."
"With my Digital Fire software I will be able to see recipes I concoct or decide to borrow and see chemistry information about those recipes pertaining to how I want the glaze to look, and get an idea from expansion info. if a recipe may give problems on my clay bodies, etc. Thank so much for all the information you put out there ..... it really is helpful and edifies and save my reputation as a artist making and selling ceramics."
"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."
"Your site is great BTW. I took off 4 months from my pottery business to read and follow this adventure. Time well spent. Of course I am still reading...."
"I've pretty much put the program through several calculations and it is very elegant, easy to use. Best of all for us Apple folks, it works on OSX."