Getting started

In your first steps, it is advised to use ZamiaCAD as mere Eclipse VHDL editor.

To use it, you create a new ZamiaCAD project and add your sources (VHDL files) into the project. You can copy or link files and whole folders, like usually in Eclipse project. Like Java or C Eclipse plug-in, Zamiacad scans all folders and parses all VHDL files in the project.

One distinguishing feature of ZamiaCAD is the BuildPath.txt file. It stores project options because ZamiaCAD can build VHDL projects separately from Eclipse and it is legacy to store many important options in this file. The most important of them is the toplevel entry. Once you have finished adding source files, you specify the top module using

toplevel MODULE_NAME

This triggers VHDL elaboration of MODULE_NAME after parsing completes. Elaboration basically builds your model -- the whole hierarchy of submodule instantiations -- and resolves the references. This is useful because this effectively discovers semantic errors in your design in addition to syntax errors, discovered by parser. Successful elaboration should create a tree of nodes -- the hierarchical structure of the design -- (see the red nodes in the Project Navigator have appeared

) and enables the hyperlinking -- quick jumping to the object declarations in source code with Ctrl+mouse click.

Please note that when you jump by either double clicking the red nodes or hyperlinking in the source code text editor, your path at the top of the text editor

is updated. The path is an important context that is necessary for the text editor to be able to locate the objects under cursor in the design hierarchy. You should understand that the module whose text you edit may be instantiated in many different places of the design hierarchy, and object types (e.g. port widths) may slightly differ. The path is especially important for simulator, which you can launch by right mouse-clicking on the red node, since values of signals highly depend on the location of the instance.

The elaboration is incremental and is performed every time a file is saved on the disk.

You may specify more than one toplevel. The only important thing to remember is that TOPLEVEL MODULES MUST BE SPECIFIED IN UPPERCASE in BuildPath regardless of their case in vhdl sources. Other BuildPath options allow choosing the target library for file or folder compilation and disabling elaboration of certain sources, which is useful to resolve conflicts when you have multiple versions of the same entity and remember that all source files are compiled in ZamiaCAD. You may find the full list of BuildPath options at [BuildPath.txt] page.

By default, project is crated in Eclipse workspace folder. But, it might be more convenient to choose your own folder when creating the project. This may save time as it obviates the need to add sources afterwards.