0.1 A quartus project from start to finish: 2 bit mux tutorial

Building projects in quartus

This section is intended to provide an in-depth introduction to creating projects in Quartus, laying out a circuit diagram, simulating the circuit, and finally using the project to configure an FPGA through an example project showcasing a 2-bit MUX. Altera has made a very nice tutorial for Quartus as well which you can find here . Altera’s tutorial is meant for a different board than the DE0 we will be using so make sure to account for that. Also, they have a slightly different method for connecting inputs and outputs to the FPGA. Either method works and you can use whichever one you prefer, however, the method set forth in this section will likely be more straightforward and user-friendly. Additionally, you can access another tutorial from within Quartus at any time by clicking on Tutorial in the Help menu.

Starting a quartus project

A Quartus project acts as a support structure for a collection of design files. It serves to bring them together in a common working environment, define their relationships both within the project to each other and to the FPGA, and define common characteristics. All work in Quartus starts with a project.

• Begin by opening Quartus II Web Edition. A screen titled “Getting Started with Quartus II Software” should open from which you can select Create a New Project. Otherwise select File->New Project Wizard. Make sure you select this and not simply New, which would instead create a new file.
• In the working directory field specify the folder,”My_Quartus_Projects” for the purpose of this example, to save your project in. While you can make this folder on your U: drive, Quartus will generally run faster if working on projects in the C: drive. It is recommended to make temporary folder on the C: drive to put your projects in and transfer them to your U: drive for safe keeping. Note that Quartus will not create a folder for the project files in this location, it will merely save the files here so make sure the lowest level folder is somewhere set aside for this particular project. This will make it easier to locate files in the project and to transfer the project between different computers. Finally, enter the desired name for your project, the final field for the top level design file name will fill itself in as you name the project. It is recommended for simplicities sake that the project and the folder it’s in have the same name. Also note that Quartus will not let you use spaces in your naming, underscores or dashes are recommended instead. The name “2_bit_mux” will be used for the purposes of this example.

• Next you will see the Add Files screen. All of the labs and projects you will be working on will either have all necessary files included or be started from scratch so we won’t be using this feature for now. It is also possible to add files whenever you open a file or save as and we will want to do this during this tutorial in order to ensure our project works as expected.