Home → Techniques and Tips → NeuralTools → Trained Network of Networks
Applies to: NeuralTools 6.x/7.x
Can I train a collection of neural nets and have a supervisory net choose which one to invoke depending upon the inputs?
There is no such function in NeuralTools for Excel as shipped. You might possibly construct this using the programming interfaces that are available for accessing Palisade neural net functionality (though it sounds rather complex). You might also consider using these interfaces for another scenario, namely training a neural net, and then using it in the context of your own VBA code.
The Excel Developer Kit (XDK) is included with NeuralTools. This lets you write VBA code to train a neural net based on Excel data, and store this net either in an Excel workbook or a file external to Excel (in Palisade's format). One limitation with this option is that the data for training and predicting must be in Excel, in NeuralTools data sets. You define data sets through the Data Set Manager command or through the programming interface. Workbooks with sample XDK code are available through the Help menu of NeuralTools.
We offer another product, a set of libraries named Palisade Custom Runtime. PCR makes Palisade's math available outside Excel, including neural net functionality. PCR can be used to train nets, and it can also predict using nets trained in Excel and stored in files. PCR could also be used from VBA for Excel, providing greater flexibility than the XDK. To use PCR from VBA, some development platform compatibility issues would have to be resolved. For example, PCR has a .NET interface, which is not directly accessible from VBA; the problem could be resolved with some programming effort.
Last edited: 2016-08-02