Platform Designer UI

A UI refresh is still inevitable, I think. The IPs keep increasing with each release and designing using the current system is too cumbersome Some Hard Processing System IPs for example can take up the whole screen whereas a schematic approach can have blocks with connections on two sides of an IP block which in my opinion would help give a smoother design process.

I tried that and it worked only for the time when the project was open. When I returned to work in Platform Designer after closing it, the UI had reset itself. It feels like the tool is disconnected from the main Quartus software. In Quartus for example, customization actions like resizing the windows, closing or opening others, merging or seperating windows, stays as that even if I close Quartus and open it later. In Platform Designer however, any changes to the UI only work for that project at that time. Opening a new project, another existing project or going back to the same project at a later time in Platfrom Designer always resets to the default UI, so hence organizing the UI has to be done before setting to work on the actual design.

In the "IP Catalog" tab too for example, if I set that I want to "Show all IPs", and have them "organized by name rather than category", it will work at that time for that specific project. However, it will default to the "sort by category" and "show IP for current setting" if I open a new project, open an existing project or open the same project at a later time

I think that the issue is not caused by the screen resolution but rather the fact that Platform Designer doesn't seem to save the user layout customization actions.

While we're at it, I also would ask whether the whole Quartus software tool is up for a rework. From my point of view, the tools at the moment are still quite similar to those that were used when FPGAs were largely used for prototyping digital circuits and as such the design was more from an HDL approach than IPs. Now with increased FPGA/FPSoC applications like AI, compute acceleration, RF and more, doesn't that warrant a redesign of the entire software suite?

I am also of the opinion that the three seperate ways that Quartus is shipped might be stifling time and resource allocation into developing one software tool that works for all devices. That would enable that one software tool to be as perfect as possible since the software development team focuses all their resources and time on just the one. The hardware side of things, like the new Agilex devices, is looking like it's outpacing the software tools for it, case in point the Platform Designer being discussed.

All in all, thank you for the feedback provided to the development team on my behalf.

Njoroge.