Maybe simpler to learn and integrate a 3rd party API (Assimp etc) rather than learn how to parse file formats from scratch. At least consider it one more good time before continuing. Both paths will be beneficial to your learning.

Okay, thanks.

Does anyone have any references to documentation regarding Assimp..? I have been trying since the past week and I haven't been able to even get the importer to fire up.. The documentation given in the site of the source code isn't very comprehensive and the sample codes just do not work.

So, I have tried for the past week without any luck with Assimp (no proper documentation, etc) and I have implemented a pretty efficient STL Rendering system using VTK. If there are any updates/changes, I will probably update it in the VTK forum (since now it has become completely unrelated to NeHe).

To everyone who replied - thank you.