My basic task, however i am not able to get the shapes and grid in the centre of the window. Where am i going wrong???
Did you try to use the middle mouse button options to zoom-in/zoom-out, rotate, and panning the view with shift until the object is centered?
Also you can change the View Options on the 3D View Header to “View All” or “View Selected” until you get a nice shot of your work!
Hope that helped. 
Thank you so much i am definitely going to try out your suggestion!