beginner help with understanding altera project workflow - DE2 board

[Altera_Forum]

Hi all, 

 I am new to development with the DE2 board and to developing apps for FPGA in general.  With altera i am having trouble getting the big picture ... heres what i understand right now. would appreciate if someone can fill in the blanks / correct it :)   1. altera 2 ide - ??? 2. sopc builder - to build a system description (what all components, their addresses, properties etc.) 3. NIOS IDE - to actually code the software processor  any help will be much appreciated !  thanks -ankit

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  I am new to development with the DE2 board and to developing apps for FPGA in general.   With altera i am having trouble getting the big picture ... heres what i understand right now. would appreciate if someone can fill in the blanks / correct it :)    1. altera 2 ide - ???  --- Quote End ---     This question is unclear... It could have been: 

1. Altera DE2 - altera development and education board 
2. Quartus - software environment for designing, analyzing, simulating, synthezing, mapping and downloading designs to an altera FPGA. 
3. ...

  --- Quote Start ---  2. sopc builder - to build a system description (what all components, their addresses, properties etc.)  --- Quote End ---     SOPC Builder is a tool in the Quartus environment for defining, composing and generating bus-based architectures. Its major use is for designing Nios II processor based systems.   --- Quote Start ---  3. NIOS IDE - to actually code the software processor  --- Quote End ---   Software environment for developing software on Nios based processor systems.