Meet Roland Melkert

Name:	Roland Melkert
	[Roland]
Age:	34
Country:	Netherlands
Role(s):	LSC

Roland is the author of LD4DStudio and LDCad and a current member of the LDraw Standards Committee (LSC).

Name: Roland Melkert (Username: Roland)

Age: 34 (as of 2011)

Location: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Europe

Occupation: Self employed Software Engineer.

History with LDraw: Discovered (stumbled on) LDraw somewhere in 2000/2001. Don't remember how exactly, but I think it was the result of a sidetrack while doing research for a LEGO Mindstorm presentation at college.

Didn't start really playing around with LDraw until I needed a subject for some 3D programming experiments. I always like to do something practical while learning something new, so this let to a simple viewer which later became LDModeler (~2002).

Around 2004 I had to get familiar with OpenGL and so again LDraw was used to make something meaningfull while researching something, this led to LDModeler's successor LD4DStudio.

In 2010 the 'Windows only' area seem to decline, so I decided to do some research into multi platform development. This led to LDCad (also fueled by the fact I had troubles drawing models for usage in LD4DStudio). LDCad also helped with getting a grasp on multi-core programming and deepened my general 3D graphics and OpenGL experience.

In the future I probably keep using LDraw for experimental programming, still much to research :)

Related interests: I've always been a fan of LEGO pretty much only stopped playing with it as a child to eat and sleep. Lost interest (like many) around puberty, but through LDraw rediscovered it in my twenties.

This affection and being a software engineer makes for a productive combination.