I'm a newbie @ blender and is just in the process of following a tutorial. I hit a line that says

"push alt-C to convert to a mesh"

i pushed alt-C and nothing happened!! what was i suppose to see? I got stuck there.

Also, on the other hand, my ultimate goal is to draw a car on a platform, and use openGL to animate the platform's movement.

How long do you think a newbie like me would take to do this? Thanks for your replies!

When you pushed alt + C, were you in edit mode? I think it only works out of edit mode. You should have seen a dialog box that asked if you wanted to convert to a mesh.

As to how long it will take to complete your project, that depends entirely on how fast you learn and how detailed your project is. Good luck.

dreamsgate is right. It does sound like you were in the edit mode. Press the tab button and the object will turn pink. That is when ypu will be able to convert it to a mesh,