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 make all my own glazes from scratch but with the only education I have being that derived from books I am pretty much in the dark. Lucky mistakes have helped me come up with some great glazes but really, what is happening remains a mystery. I need to learn much more and am hoping your software will help with that."
"I bought your version 4.1 for DOS many years ago and am thinking of upgrading? Will be running it under Windows XP. Your current evaluation copy looks quite interesting. I am looking forward to finally understanding glaze calculations."
"The software makes glaze development more efficient and understandable for our high school students."
"I sure am enjoying working with my new Insight software. If nothing else, it gives me a way to organize my recipes--- previously I was using Excel. I have gotten great help from the effortless calculation of silica:alumina ratios for figuring surface quality."
"I am the only one using INSIGHT, almost everyone here lives under the influence of the Glaze Dragon. I am beginning to change their minds but it is taking me a lot of time... but one step at a time. It is incredible how a big company still trust the old way of formulating glazes. Thanks to your program and book Magic of Fire, I have been able to develop, correct and optimize glazes according to our clients needs! "
"Insight must be great as our potters rave about it!"