Install Digilent's Board Files

Digilent provides board files for each FPGA development board. These files make it easy to select the correct part when creating a new project and allow for automated configuration of several complicated components (including the Zynq Processing System and Memory Interface Generator) used in many designs.

The board files will be copied into your version of Vivado's installation directory. At the end of this section, an alternate method of installation is presented, which users familiar with git may find more convenient.

Download the most recent Master Branch ZIP Archive of Digilent's vivado-boards Github repository and extract it.

Open the folder extracted from the archive and navigate to its new/board_files folder. You will be copying all of this folder's subfolders.

Note: When installing Vivado versions 2014.4 or older, use the files found in 'old/board_files' instead.

Open the folder that Vivado was installed into - C:/Xilinx/Vivado or /opt/Xilinx/Vivado by default. Under this folder, navigate to its <version>/data/boards/board_files directory. If this folder doesn't exist, create it.

Copy all of the folders found in vivado-boards' new/board_files folder, then paste them into this folder.

Appendix: Installing the Board Files via the "vivado-boards" Github Repository
You might want to use this method instead if you are familiar with git and want to have a clean way of pulling in the latest changes to the board files, without needing to manually copy-paste the files into every newly-installed version.

Download the ZIP archive of the Digilent's “vivado-boards” Github repository and extract it into a memorable location where it can stay. Alternatively, you can use git and a command prompt to clone the repository into the current working directory with the command git clone https://github.com/Digilent/vivado-boards.

Find the file “Vivado_init.tcl” in the “utility” subdirectory of the vivado-boards repo. Copy and paste it into the %APPDATA%/Xilinx/Vivado/ directory for Windows or $HOME/.Xilinx/Vivado/ (after authenticating as superuser) in Linux. This file is a script that will be run whenever Vivado is launched. It will load Digilent's board files for use in Vivado from the directory they were extracted into.

Note: You can also find the path to this directory by launching Vivado and, before changing directory, running the pwd command in the Tcl Console.

Note: The script init.tcl should be used instead of Vivado_init.tcl for Vivado versions 2016.4 and older. If multiple versions of Vivado from before and after 2016.4 are installed, both scripts should used.

Open the copied init script in a text editor. Change the text <extracted path> in the script to the path to the extracted vivado-boards folder. Save and close the file.

This script sets the board.repoPaths parameter to a fixed path. The script is run whenever any version of Vivado is launched, and the parameter for that version of Vivado will remain set after you are done with your session. This means that by installing the script, you are setting the board file repo for every version of Vivado you are using, and the changes will remain even after the script is potentially deleted in future. You can always clear the parameter later with the command set_param board.repoPaths “”, again, this persists between sessions.