Ruben De Laat
Chief Executive Officer at BIM Base B.V.
The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRuben De Laat is a software architect and entrepreneur with 25 years in development and 15 years of focused experience building Open BIM tooling and teams. As founder and CEO of BIM Base he helps software vendors and governments integrate Open BIM, drawing on a decade leading the open-source BIMserver project at TNO. He is a hands-on engineer who has driven both back-end BIMserver API integrations and front-end WebGL IFC viewer optimizations, including performance-focused shader and GPU buffer work in the widely used BIMsurfer projects. Based in The Hague, he combines systems-level architecture with practical delivery, shipping production viewers and APIs that bridge standards and real-world workflows. Notably, his contributions include creating a robust BimServerApi client and evolving rendering layers to make WebGL IFC visualization faster and more reusable. He holds a Bachelor of I.T. from The Hague University of Applied Sciences and translates deep technical know-how into product-focused open-source impact.
15 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of I.T., Bachelor of I.T. at De Haagse Hogeschool / The Hague University of Applied Sciences
Github Skills (7)
webgl10
javascript10
websocket10
shader9
glsl9
front-end-development9
performance-optimization9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
opensourceBIM/BIMsurfer-before2019
Oct 2012 - Jan 2020
The first open source WebGL based IFC viewer
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:3 releases, 422 commits, 7 PRs in 7 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Ruben implemented features related to integrating and utilizing a BIMserver API within the WebGL-based IFC viewer. Their commits reveal the creation of a `BimServerApi` JavaScript class, including methods for user authentication (login, autologin, logout), web socket communication, and data download. The changes focused on adapting the viewer to work with BIMserver API versions, particularly version 1.2 and later.
ifcwebgljavascriptopenglviewer
opensourceBIM/BIMsurfer
Jul 2018 - Jul 2021
The latest version of the BIM Surfer WebGL viewer for IFC
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:787 commits, 5 PRs, 277 pushes in 3 years
Contributions summary:Ruben's commits primarily focused on modifying the `BIMsurfer21/defaultrenderlayer.js` file, implementing and modifying the rendering layer for the WebGL viewer. The changes involved importing and utilizing various buffer managers and transformers to populate, allocate, and render GPU buffers. They introduced the creation of objects, adding of geometry to objects, and adding reusable geometry. Additionally, the user modified the shaders to optimize calculations.
ifcopenbimstandardsgltf3d-modelswebgl
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