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 tested at least 1001 recipes and I can only wish it had been 1001 glorious nights. I have boxes full of bad tests. I am ashamed of the pots I have dressed in a ho-hum manner. It seems that after creating my beloved pots, I hand them over to 'death by glaze and extreme heat'...so here I am, the Internet Illiterate, 1001 glaze test wonder, and I am finally on the right track!""
"Although only a part time potter, I would not be able to experiment to the same extent without Insight. It makes me admire potters of past generations who managed to develop glazes without such a tool. "
"I mostly work with crystalline glazes. All the European potters speak in terms of Seger formulas so I have to become proficient with the program if I am to communicate with them."
"Now that I have purchased the software, I am finding all of this information and so many of my questions are being answered as I watch and digest the videos you made. Let me just say that what you have provided is amazing - and the way you provide the information is so digestible even for someone like me who has absolutely no understanding chemistry or what is involved in making glazes. I understand so much more, I can't even believe that I got a grasp of the Batch & Formula recipe sections on the videos. I will be working the lessons plans you provide too to become better at this. The software provides a lot more than meets the eye.... INSIGHT is worth every penny! "
"I liked INSIGHT so much I bought both the Macintosh and Windows versions."
"Thanks for this great version!!!!!"