The PDF Manual.
Modified: November 21, 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 like INSIGHT, it has helped me a tremendous amount!"
"I've recently purchased your software, and am totally blown away by the completeness of the package. The tutorial is incredible, I've learned so much from it already! This will be invaluable to me; glazes have always been somewhat mysterious, and I've relied far too heavily on the Kiln Gods. I'm looking forward to completing the tutorial and start experimenting.... As to the software, as an old Foxpro programmer myself, I can appreciate what it took to do what you did."
"As part of my technical studies module, I have been evaluating various glaze calculation programs. From a personal view I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. Subject to further evaluation over the next few weeks, particularly with regard to the background resources, I would recommend Insight to anyone interested in Ceramics even if they were not particularly concerned with glaze calculation, which they should be, and which obviously lies at the heart of the software."
"...this problem was in fact largely due to my own attitude. I rarely made practical use of this body of information myself in my own glaze work. You know the routine, find a glaze, run some sample test on tiles and make some variations, mainly color test, while never really fully understanding how and why glaze materials worked the way they do. Ron Roy's workshop certainly gave me the information I have been looking for for many years. The "immediate" response available through Ron's "Digital Fire Insight" computer program was extremely exciting to me! In conversation Ron we discussed the "Immediate feedback" available through your computer program."
"I really like this program...I really like it a lot. In 1995 I started doing pottery. I was always interested in making glazes and took a glaze calculation glass from one of the instructors at the community college that I attend. We did all the math by hand. I learned the calculation process and about glaze material. I am not computer efficient, but when I found out from a classmate that there was software to do the math I looked at what was available. I tried one other program before I tried Insight. Insight provided me with the tools to increase my testing ability during the semester about 100 fold."
"I am having a great time with your software, thanks for writing it, by the way. I am a ceramic chemist and technician; I have just left a wage job in industry to begin consulting. I have used Insight before and it is my favorite glaze calc program. I have a similar personal mission to raise the general level of ceramic knowledge and expertise both in the academic and industrial worlds, and I have always appreciated the free share of knowledge that the digitalfire website is built around."