Creating a Block Design - 2020.2 English

Vivado Design Suite User Guide: Designing IP Subsystems Using IP Integrator (UG994)

Document ID
UG994
Release Date
2021-01-04
Version
2020.2 English

You can create a block design (BD) inside the current project directory, or outside of the project directory structure. A common use case for creating the BD outside of a project is to use the BD in non-project mode, or to use it in multiple projects, or to use it in a team-based design flow.

To create a new BD:

  1. In the Flow Navigator, click Create Block Design under the IP INTEGRATOR section, as shown in the following figure.

    The Create Block Design dialog box opens, as shown in the following figure.



  2. Specify the Design name, Directory, and Specify source set for the design.

    The default value for the Directory field is <Local to Project>. To override the default value, click Directory and select Choose Location.

  3. Click OK.

    The equivalent Tcl command to create a BD is create_bd_design. The syntax of the command is as follows:

    create_bd_design <your_design_name> 
    Important: Limit block design names to 25 characters or fewer to avoid any problems with the path length limitation of the Windows OS. When the specified name exceeds 25 characters, the Vivado tool issues a warning, as shown in the following figure.


    The Create Block Design creates an empty BD on disk, which is not automatically removed if the BD is closed without saving.

  4. If you want to remove a newly-created Block Design, then manually delete the empty BD from the Sources window of the Vivado IDE by doing one of the following:
    • Right-click the block design, and select Remove File from Project.
    • Use the remove_files Tcl command, shown as follows:
remove_files <project_name>/<project_name>.srcs/sources_1/bd/<bd_name>/<bd_name>.bd
file delete -force <project_name>/<project_name>.srcs/sources_1/bd/<bd_name>
Note: Starting in Vivado Design Suite version 2018.3, the block design file format has changed from XML to JSON. When you open a block design that uses the older XML schema in Vivado 2018.3 or later, click Save to convert the format from XML to JSON. The following INFO message notifies you of the schema change.
INFO: [BD 41-2124] The block design file <block_design.bd> has changed from an XML format to a JSON format. All flows are expected to work as in prior versions of Vivado. Please contact your Xilinx Support representative, in case of any issues.
Important: The format conversion from XML to JSON occurs only during a Save operation.