Startup Guide

Cradle-5.3 provides a new web-based resource to assist new users and evaluators to start to explore Cradle and learn about its capabilities.

This new web-based resource is a set of web pages that are installed with every Cradle client installation and which contains:

• An introduction to Cradle
• A step-by-step guide to creating a new Cradle project and populating it with data
• A list of follow-on activities for evaluators and new users that includes links to other Cradle documentation and information resources

When opened, the Startup Guide provides an introductory page and top-level menu:

Following the Your Introduction to Cradle link provides the introduction page from where you can access descriptions of the main parts of Cradle:

After you have explored this section you can either follow direct links to the evaluation section or you can select the I have installed Cradle. What do I do now? link in the main page to reach the evaluation part of the Startup Guide. This is a collection of step-by-step instructions to create a new Cradle project and populate it with representative data, in this case for a car park:

We encourage all evaluators of Cradle to follow these step-by-step instructions as the first part of their Cradle evaluation.

Finally, either direct links or the I have completed the evaluation project. How do I use my own data? link in the main page will direct you to a set links to further information and Cradle documents that you can use to plan how to apply Cradle to your own projects:

The new Startup Guide is accessed on Windows by selecting:

Start → Programs → Cradle → Start Up

On UNIX systems, the initial web page to open in your web browser is either of:

$CRADLEHOME/doc/index.htm