Assigning Pins

Go to Assignment > Assignment Editor or press Ctrl + Shift + A on the keyboard to open the assignment editor. You should see the following the window open up in Quartus

Double Click the tab under section To, you should see Node Finder icon. Click on the finder. The following window opens. Click on list.

You can select the nodes individually or send all the nodes at once. Select all the input and output port nodes to copy them to the editor by clicking > button. Use >> to send all the nodes at once. Click OK to update the assignment editor

You should see the selected pins in the assignment editor.

Select the Location as the Assignment Name to assign locations of the FPGA pins to the input and output ports of the entity you have created. Generally switches and push buttons are used to give inputs to the entity and LEDs are connected to the output ports to see the results. Refer the user manual of the ALTERA DE2-115 development board look at the assignment values

Compile the project to create the assignment files of the FPGA board. (Hint: For successful assignments the status will change from cross to tick). Select Tools > Programmer to upload the code to FPGA board. The following window opens

Click Hardware Setup to manually select the FPGA USB board. If the drivers to the FPGA board are installed properly you should see the USB-Blaster [USB-0] in the Currently selected hardware. Make sure the FPGA is turned to reflect this and USB is connected to the USB Blaster Port

Click add file to add the *.sof file. Using this *.sof file we can upload the entity to FPGA board.

Click Start to upload the code. The Progress shows the Success and Failure of the upload. Sometimes upload fails due to the setting on the FPGA. An important setting to upload the code is to set the Programming Mode switch to RUN at all times. If this setting is set to PROG the code will never be uploaded. On a successful upload you should see something like this in the progress bar