Programming my nexys A7 in schematic mode

[circema]

Hi to everyone, I just bought a NEXYS A7-100T (with artix-7 100T fpga). I would like to program it in schematic mode (not VHDL). I used to work with basys-2 and IDE software, that had a capacity to program with schematic instead of VHDL. What are the options to program the new board using schematic mode with the Vivado software (free version). I read somewhere that one way to work around this is to draw and simulate in a schematic software like TINA and then export to VHDL, and use this as a source in Vivado.

My questions are:

1- Is there an easier option to do what I want?

2- If not, is there another option than TINA to draw the circuit. Our students already use KiCAD to draw, but I read KiCAD cannot export to vhdl

Thanks

[zygot]

Are you sure that you want to go back to the last century?

I remember the days when the only way to design with Xilinx was using a clunky Unix ported Windows Schematic capture program . It was horrible. In the early days Altera let you do schematic capture or AHDL. This was before the IEEE created VHDL libraries for synthesis. The Altera schematic capture wasn't quite as horrible as the Xilinx version but had more than it's share of issues. For one thing maintaining and keeping track of schematic component versions and variations. No fun at all.

What's you motivation for this?

I suspect that this is the old Genie wishes conundrum; wishing for something seems easy.. until you get you wish and start learning about consequences.

Do you really think that you can do useful FPGA development connected to real hardware using the methods that you are thinking of and it will be easier than learning an HDL? Moreover, your schematic components will be VHDL written by a script... do you really think that this is going to be great? Edited September 21, 2022 by zygot

[chclau]

I agree with zygot. If you want to do more than very simple projects, if you want to learn things that will be useful for the industry, make an effort to learn an HDL (Verilog/VHDL). The learning curve is steep, but at least you will have learned something useful for yourself and your career.