Updated Excel Toolkit Features

Many of you are discovering the TK Solver-Excel Toolkit as a great way to share your TK models with others who may not have TK Solver (yet). The Toolkit is also handy for combining several TK models into a single application with Excel as the interface. There are several important new features that were recently added that you're sure to like. Look for an update on our web site during the week of March 5th.

A Solve Button
Some of your more sophisticated TK models may take a few seconds to run, especially if they require list solving or include procedure functions which generate thousands of list values. When such models are linked with Excel, you don't necessarily want them to solve every time you change a cell in Excel. In most cases, you probably want to be able to make a series of inputs and then run the TK model. We added a solve button to the Toolkit toolbar. Make your inputs, then click the solve button.

Lock/Unlock Autosolve Feature
We added a new item to the Lock/Unlock form, allowing you to turn off autosolving of the TK model. If this option is used, the Solve button described above must be used to solve. This option is also included in the Toolkit Wizard so you can set it during the linking process.

Link Lists
After you have your variables and plots linked to Excel, you can now link any of the lists from the model too. It is handled separately from the Toolkit Wizard to allow you to place the lists in cells that won't trample over other important cells in your spreadsheets. The linked lists can be used in List Solving or with TK procedure functions. By default the lists take up the same number of cells as elements in the lists but you can specify longer ranges to allow for dynamic updating the list lengths. You will see a new icon on the Toolkit icon bar for this new feature.

Remember, these new features will install with a TK update from our web site sometime during the week of March 5th. If you have users of your Toolkit applications using TK Player, they will need to download the latest version of TK Player to take advantage of these features. Let them know the next time you send them a spreadsheet.

Finally, thanks to Tin Yin Lam and Michael Kampa for their help and patience in testing these new features.

posted by Todd Piefer @ 12:58 PM