Meet Jaco van der Molen

Jaco van der Molen
Username:	[Jaco]
Age:	45
Country:	The Netherlands
Role(s):	OMR admin

Name: Jaco van der Molen (Username: Jaco)

Age: 45 (as of 2019)

Location: The Netherlands

History with LDraw:

Jaco discovered LDraw way back in 1996 reading about it in an issue of the PC Format magazine which got him straight out of his dark age. During that time he studied New Media and Web Design at the Graphic Lyceum in Amsterdam, graduating in 1997 with creating a website. Back then, that was totally new. He got a job in IT and later at an innovative web design company. He has had a few LEGO related websites. He joined the LDraw discussion list, was active on LUGNET and still on various other (Dutch) fora.

In 2001 Jaco attended LEGOWORLD for the first time and presented LDraw to the Dutch public. The LEGOWORLD event in Zwolle then attracted more the 27500 visitors. Jaco attended LEGOWORLD 8 times to present LDraw and got many people both young and old enthusiastic about LDraw. The most heard comment then was the people were amazed that all the software was free (how very Dutch ;-)

Jaco took part in co-authoring and editing various chapters for the book Virtual Lego: The Official LDraw.org guide to LDraw Tools for Windows. The book was written by Tim Courtney, Ahui Herrera, and Steve Bliss and Jaco sold over 200 copies of in the Netherlands.

Jaco is owner and author of the Dutch website www.binarybricks.nl which features tutorials on how to install and work with the LDraw suite of tools and has guides to MLCad, LDCad, and LPub3D. He also wrote the official online manual for LPub and LPub3D is currently re-writing the manual dedicated to LPub3D.

He has helped many people (both many Dutch and foreign) in the more than 20 years of his LDraw experience and has become an expert in using the LDraw suite of tools and specializes in creating instructions in LPub3D. He also authored a few dozen parts for the official parts library.

In 2018 he made the instructions for the 10th Anniversary Kiosk model for the popular Hispa Brick magazine and works with LEGO Certified Professional Dirk Denoyelle in designing models and making instructions for them.

Among his many achievements, the two greatest are the complete digital redesign of the large statue of the famous Dutch Sinterklaas which counts almost 35000 bricks and is seven feet tall and the minifig scale model of the Golden Tulip Hotel in Noordwijk, which was completely designed digitally in LDCad and build for real in 2017 counting almost 8000 bricks.

Related interests:

In addition to LEGO, Jaco has a great interest in graphic design and computer software and works at a school for secondary education. This school has an active First LEGO League team.