User Interface

The VHDL perspective

Sigasi HDT is built upon the Eclipse platform, which permits to use multiple languages withing a single environment. The user interface can be customized for a particular language. In Eclipse terminology, this customized user interface is called a perspective. The logo of the current perspective is higlighted in the upper right corner. The perspective to use with Sigasi HDT is the VHDL perspective, with the following logo:

If you use Sigasi HDT App (the standalone version), this is the default perspective. If you use Sigasi HDT Eclipse plugin, another perspective may be open instead. You can select the VHDL perspective by clicking the button next the perspective logo:

Project views

When you open a project in Sigasi HDT, a number of views are presented in the user interface. Here is a typical screenshot, with the views highlighted:

The functionality of the views is as follows:

project explorer view

This view is a hierarchical representation of all files in all projects. You can use it to navigate to a particular file in a particular project and select it.

editor view

In this view, the contents of the currently selected file are shown. The file contents can be directly edited here.

problems view

In this view, all problems that were detected in the current project are listed.

outline view

This view shows the contents of the selected file in terms of VHDL objects. You can use it to review the content, and to navigate to a specific VHDL object.

hierarchy view

This view shows the VHDL design hierarchy below the selected top level object.

Project view usage

The views provide alternative ways to access the information in a project. They permit efficient navigation, inspection and editing.

The project explorer view shows the file contents of the project. When you click on a file, it is opened in the editor view.

In the editor view, you can edit the contents of a file. It is a tabbed view so that multiple files can be open for editing simultanuously. The currently selected file is the active file.

The outline view is always synchronized with the active file. It displays the contents of the active file in terms of the VHDL objects that it contains.

The hierarchy view displays the VHDL design hierarchy below the selected top level object. You can select a top level from the available candidates in a pop-up window after clicking Select toplevel.... Alternatively, you can right-click on an architecture in the outline or hierarchy view and click Set as top level.

When you double-click an object in the hierarchy, the editor view is updated accordingly, possibly by displaying the contents of a different file.

You can further customize the behavior of the project explorer view in ways that can be particularly handy for large projects. For example, the project explorer view can be linked with the editor view by clicking the link icon .

Furthermore, you can use filters to define which files are shown. Select the icon View Menu and then Customize view. You can then select a filter whose matching files will be hidden in the view.

Project exploration and navigation

Sigasi HDT offers powerful techniques to explore a project and navigate through it.

Hovering

To find the declaration of a given identifier, hold your mouse pointer over it. After about a second, a popup shows you the name and datatype of the signal. This technique is called hovering.

Highlighting

If you click on an identifier, it is highlighted. In addition, all other occurrences of the identifier that refer to the same object are highlighted. Note that this highlighting is intelligent: it is not based on the identifier’s string value, but on the object that the identifier refers to.

Navigate to a declaration

You can easily navigate to the declaration of any port, signal, entity, etc. Place the cursor on the identifier, right-click and select Open Declaration. The editor immediately switches to the line that declares the object. Since this operation is so commonly used, it is assigned to the shortcut key F3.

Finding object occurrences

To look for occurrences of a given identifier in different files, place your cursor on the identifier and right-click. Now select Search References. A search window will appear on the bottom of your workbench, displaying all occurrences of the selected identifier. You can easily navigate through all occurrences by clicking the Show Next Match arrow and the Show Previous Match arrow in the search result view. Note that all occurrences are highlighted and marked with a small arrow at the left border of the editor for easy recognition.