RadToolz vers. 5.00
RadToolz v5.00 replaces the decay-series engine's data layer. In prior versions, the properties of every supported radionuclide were embedded directly in source code as thousands of lines of hardcoded object declarations. That data now lives in a structured, embedded dataset loaded through a dedicated repository layer at runtime, with results cached after first load so there is no repeated parsing cost during a session. Beyond the internal cleanup, this change let us expand isotope coverage to the full ENSDF radionuclide set, and makes future data corrections and additions far faster to deliver, since they no longer require touching or recompiling program logic.
Alongside the data migration, the Excel-DNA integration layer that RadToolz is built on has been updated to a newer release, and the add-in now targets a current .NET Framework and Office interop version. This keeps the add-in aligned with the Excel versions our users are actually running and reduces the risk of compatibility issues as Microsoft continues to update Office.
v5.00 also adds a correctness safeguard to decay-chain calculations: RadToolz now explicitly detects and rejects attempts to decay a series backward in time, returning a clear error instead of a silently invalid result. Every one of these changes was verified against the existing calculation engine to confirm that outputs for existing formulas are unchanged - this release is a foundation and reliability upgrade, not a recalculation of your existing workbooks.
Finally, v5.00 adds two protections aimed at your workbooks directly rather than the calculation engine. RTZFunctions, RTZParams, and the decay-series list function now check whether their target range already holds data and ask for confirmation before writing over it, instead of silently overwriting whatever was there. And a workbook containing RTZUpdate() now checks for a newer release as soon as it opens - running in the background so it never delays or blocks the workbook while it loads - and offers to take you straight to the latest release on GitHub if one is available.
