You know, I've personally never needed to use the floor-planning tools. It seems like a pretty advanced option. Of course, using open source simulators/command

You know, I've personally never needed to use the floor-planning tools. It seems like a pretty advanced option. Of course, using open source simulators/command line flow doesn't preclude opening the floor planning tool in the GUI when you need it (my command line based synthesis flow just invokes the same tools that the GUI does). I find the post place-and-route netlist viewer inscrutable. I have debugged some synthesis issues by generating the post synthesis simulation model in Verilog and digging through that in a text editor. Maybe that's a weird way to do it, but I find it much faster and easier, especially when I know the signal names I'm looking for. My main problem is with the Altera GUI tools. It's a personal preference thing obviously, but I'm pretty attached to my editor, as are most people.