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've been using Insight for a couple of years now, and I absolutely love it. Thanks for writing such a great program and reference database. "
"I used the trial version and was very impressed with this software. I look forward to using it in my glaze calculation class."
"I am currently finishing my schooling, and will begin teaching in the fall. This program will be invaluable to me once I start teaching. Thank you for all the hard work you have done in putting all this information in one easy to use program. My instructors are of the "happy accident" school of glazing. They have done this for so many years that they are constantly tweaking the glazes and mixing new ones, most of which don't give consistent results. I think this program will be a Godsend to my further education in ceramics. "
"Hi, just bought your insight software and I'm pretty stoked to get rid of my complicated excel file of glazes. Insight's running great out of the box on my ubuntu laptop with xfce 4 desktop environment. The drag and drop of images from the xfce file manager works great too."
"I'd like to say how much I enjoy using Insight for developing my clays and glazes...Again thank you for the wonderful product and support."
"Years ago, after studying all available books, and whatever you had on DigitalFire at the time, I had written a glaze program myself (in old Delphi and Paradox database) which I have later lost. At the time I did not appreciate enough yours as I wanted more for recording firings and tests. It was a bit slow and cumbersome and, obviously, lacked such a wonderful support like 4Sight. So now I can fully appreciate what you have done and am grateful for it."