XPS to PlanAhead Project Conversion

The following process describes how to create a PlanAhead project from an existing XPS project. This process has been tested in ISE 14.4 and 14.7. It is likely that this flow is different or broken in earlier versions of the Xilinx tools.

Overview

The steps below use a few placeholder names:

• <xps_proj_root>: root of your existing XPS project. This is the folder containing your system.xmp and system.mhs files.
• <pa_proj_diir>: root of your new PlanAhead project. This folder should be empty before creating the PlanAhead project.
• PA_PROJ: name of your new PlanAhead project

Creating the PlanAhead Project

1. Launch Xilinx PlanAhead
2. Select Create New Project, click Next
3. Enter your choice of project name. We'll refer to this as PA_PROJ below
4. Enter a project location. We'll refer to this as <pa_proj_diir> below
5. Click Next
6. Select RTL Project and check Do not specify sources at this time
7. Click Next, then select your FPGA device (xc6vlx240tff1156-2 for WARP v3 projects)
8. Click Next then Finish

You should now see the PlanAhead workspace.

Creating the PlanAhead XPS Source

1. Start in the PlanAhead workspace and find the Sources tab, probably in the upper-left of the Project Manager sub-pane.
2. Right-click and select Add Sources
3. Select Add or Create Embedded Sources then click Next
4. Click Create Sub-Design
5. Enter a top-level module name. We'll use xps_top here.
6. Click Ok, then Finish
7. XPS will launch on top of the PlanAhead workspace. You should see a dialog box asking: "This project appears to be a blank project. Do you want to create a Base System using the BSB Wizard?". Click No