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.
"It was nice to meet you in person. You have written a great program. It has and continues to be a great learning tool for me aside from the assisting tool it was intended to be. I usually need concrete numbers and facts before I can learn anything; once confronted with them, I just research the topic as time permits. Thank you for making this possible. I can't wait to see what the next version will do."
"I think I'm set to try and learn this thing .. I haven't read a book that is not a children's book in many years, let alone a glaze calculation manual! ... I have started reading some of the Magic of Fire and a lot of information and excitement about understanding how things work is coming back."
"I was delighted to read your brilliant book, fantastic. I mean I've had to teach glaze calc in past, and I've never seen it written so clearly and easy for me to understand. I mean it was a delight to read your way of putting it together, super. You are marvelous...keep up the good work, what a guy!"
"I got my first computer because of INSIGHT. It has changed my life after 30 years in ceramics and teaching."
"I make porcelain and stoneware and have been a grateful user of Insight for years."
"My goal is to reformulate and simplify many of my old cone 9-10 glazes to cone six, substitute ingredients for materials no longer available and remove any ingredient that now has been found to be toxic or questionable. Of all the software I reviewed so far, I have found yours to be the best and easiest to use. Your tutorials are also excellent."