Manually Linking the FPGA Component Schematic to the FPGA Project

Linking of the two projects is carried out from within the Projects panel.

With the panel focused, enable the Structure Editor option. The hierarchical structure within the two separate projects will be reflected in the panel. The entries that appear in this view can include documents, sheet symbols and Nexus components. Any or all of these can be included in the view by enabling the appropriate Structure View options. These options can be accessed in the following two ways:

• By selecting the Structure View category on the System - Projects Panel page of the Preferences dialog (DXP » Preferences)

• By clicking on the drop-down arrow of the button and choosing the Structure View category in the subsequent pop-up.

Note: The option to display Nexus components is enabled by default, as it is required to be able to set up the structure.

Figure 1 shows an example of the project structure in the panel, for both the PCB and FPGA projects, and with only Nexus components included in the view.

Figure 1. Projects panel in Structure Editor mode (Nexus components only).

The lower region of the Projects panel contains all the valid sub-projects that are open in the workspace. This includes FPGA, Embedded and Core projects. For FPGA projects, their defined configurations will also be listed along with constraint files associated to each.

Within this region of the panel, constraint files can be moved from one configuration to another, simply by performing a drag-and-drop. The constraint file will be disassociated from the source configuration and newly associated to the target configuration. To copy a constraint file to another configuration, simply hold down the Ctrl key whilst performing the drag-and-drop.

To purely disassociate a constraint file from a configuration, simply drag the entry for the constraint into free space within the lower region of the panel.

Double-clicking on a configuration entry will launch the Configuration Manager dialog for the parent FPGA project.

Linking of the two projects is achieved in one of the following ways:

• Dragging a configuration defined for the FPGA project from the lower region of the Projects panel and dropping it onto the entry for the FPGA component in the PCB project

• Dragging the FPGA project – from either the upper or lower regions of the panel – and dropping it onto the FPGA component entry in the PCB project

• Right-clicking on the entry for the FPGA component in the PCB project and choosing the Set Sub Project command from the pop-up menu that appears. This will open the Select Sub Project dialog, from where you can browse to and open the desired FPGA sub-project. This method is particularly useful if the desired sub-project is not currently open in the Projects panel.

When using the drag-and-drop methods, the possible FPGA component entries (that reside on schematic sheets within one or more PCB projects) that you can validly drop onto are highlighted in pale blue. As the cursor passes onto a valid 'drop zone' it will change from a no-entry symbol to a document symbol as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Linking projects through drag-and-drop.

If you choose to drag the entire FPGA project entry onto the target schematic FPGA component and more than one valid configuration exists for that project – i.e. more than one configuration contains an associated constraint file targeting the FPGA device – the Select Configuration dialog will appear (Figure 3), from where you can choose which specific configuration to use.

Figure 3. Choose which configuration to use for linking purposes.

When the required configuration has been assigned, the parent FPGA project will become linked to the PCB project and is shown in the structure hierarchy as a sub-design of the schematic FPGA component (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Structure of linked FPGA and PCB projects.

The configuration used in the linking (the linked configuration) is identified next to the name of the FPGA project, in the format:

FPGAProjectName / LinkedConfigurationName

To break the link between the two projects, simply click and drag the FPGA project entry into free space within the panel (below the last entry).

Now that a configuration has been linked, the FPGA and PCB projects become linked and the FPGA Workspace Map dialog will display a link between the schematic component in the PCB project and the FPGA project (Figure 5). The name of the configuration appears in the FPGA Projects region of the map.

Figure 5. Successful manual linking of the PCB and FPGA projects.

The projects are now linked, but they have yet to be synchronized.