CANDAT has been developed in a consistent environment called GRASP. GRASP (General Reporting and Application Support Package) is an environment which contains standard mechanisms for communicating between the user and the computer. This allows for a consistent appearance of applications.

GRASP assumes a well defined user area on the disk (usually created at installation) and a structure of modules and tasks. The following are available in GRASP environments:

1. Task startup menu
   Once a task has been chosen and it has been read in by the computer, the following menu is displayed:
   1. START the task
   2. CHOOSE another task
   3. ACTIVATE system utilities
   4. SET paper size
   5. CALL for help information
   6. EXIT to the Dos environment, saving this session
   7. SELECT printer
   8. QUIT and return to the operating system

   At the end of a task, the same menu appears again. You can choose at this point to restart the task by choosing the first option again.

   There are two ways to exit from CANDAT. One is temporary and leaves CANDAT in memory, ready to be reactivated. This is the EXIT to DOS choice. To return to CANDAT after choosing this alternative, simply type EXIT from within DOS and you will be returned to CANDAT. Do not try to start a new session of CANDAT if you exited this way. You will quickly use up all of your memory and may not be able to start a second session if you do so. If you choose QUIT and return to the operating system, CANDAT is released from memory and you must follow the regular mechanism for getting back in.