Industry Foundation Classes .ifc
Building information modelling. Walls and beams, not just meshes.
What an .ifc file holds
IFC is the open standard for Building Information Modelling: how architects, engineers and contractors hand a building between disciplines. It is barely a geometry format: it is a data model of a building, in which a wall knows that it is a wall, what it is made of, which storey it sits on and what it connects to. Converting one extracts the geometry those objects resolve to, which is what you want for visualisation, and drops the semantics, which is what made IFC worth having.
Commonly seen in: Revit, ArchiCAD, Tekla Structures, Navisworks, Solibri, BlenderBIM.
| Data | Stored in IFC |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | Yes |
| Texture maps | No |
| Animation and rigs | No |
| Scene hierarchy | Yes |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | No |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded AC14-FZK-Haus.ifc from Assimp test models with its 1 sidecar files through the viewer on this site: 35,792 triangles across 385 meshes and 13 materials, in 3.6 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
Which way is up
IFC is a Z-up format, which most of the rest of 3D is not. Files are read exactly as written and stood up for you in the viewer; the converter has a switch for it, so a model does not arrive in the next program lying on its side.
Convert IFC to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Other things to do with an .ifc file
Questions about IFC
How do I open an .ifc file?
Drop it into the viewer on this site and it opens in the browser, with the scene tree, the materials and the mesh statistics. Nothing is uploaded. If you want it in another program instead, convert it to GLB, which almost everything reads.
Is IFC a good format to archive in?
IFC stores geometry, materials and colour, scene hierarchy. Anything outside that list will not be in the file at all, so archive the original alongside it if the surfacing or the rig matters.
Does converting IFC lose quality?
Geometry is copied vertex for vertex, so the shape does not degrade. What gets lost is whatever the target format has no field for: convert to STL and the materials go, convert to OBJ and the animation goes. The comparison table on each converter page says exactly which.
Formats that hold the same things
Or go back to the full format reference.