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.
"...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 solved a shivering problem with a low expansion/high expansion frit system as recommended at Digitalfire so I bought INSIGHT."
"I've never been satisfied with the glazes I've used. Most of them are either commercial stuff or house glazes at the studio. I'm hoping that through the Insight product and the Magic of Fire I can get a better understanding of the physics and the chemistry of glazes and have more control over what happens inside the kiln and what it looks like outside the kiln. I've been reading the book and fooling about with the software and so far I'm learning quite a bit about what oxides do, what fluxes do, and so forth. Good stuff indeed. I've got high hopes."
"Just to let you know, even though it is a very complex program to learn, I am thrilled by the flexibility, and don't even use my other glaze programs anymore. I also, appreciate the very prompt help that you provide. In short, I am an Insight Addict!"
"I have looked at your website for years but only now after running our company for 15 years am I frustrated enough to spend the time needed to LEARN more about glazes. Some of my glazes are metal marking."
"Thank you. Its awesome!"