IFC Compressor
Reduce IFC file size right in your browser: merge duplicate geometry, sweep out orphaned data and strip formatting — verified output, nothing uploaded.
Your file is processed locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Drop your IFC file here
.ifc and .ifczip · IFC2x3, IFC4, IFC4x3
No file at hand? Try a sample: ·
Why IFC files are so large — and what can be safely removed
An IFC file is plain text: every point, every wall, every property is a line of STEP code you could read in a text editor. That openness is the whole point of the format, but it makes files bulky — and BIM exporters make it worse. Authoring tools routinely write the same cartesian point hundreds of times instead of reusing it, leave behind geometry and property definitions that nothing references anymore, and pad numbers to fifteen decimals of fake precision. None of that is model information. It is exhaust from the export process, and your CDE upload limit, your email attachment cap and everyone's loading time pay for it.
This compressor removes exactly that exhaust. It parses the file, builds the full reference graph, and rewrites a clean equivalent — same schema, same elements, same GlobalIds. Everything runs locally in your browser in a background thread: your model is never uploaded, so confidential tender and NDA models are fine here.
How it works
- Drop your IFC file. .ifc or .ifczip from any BIM tool. The model is indexed and validated in seconds — you will see the schema, the entity count and how many cartesian points it contains.
- Choose your techniques. The two lossless cleanups — merging duplicate points and sweeping unreferenced entities — are on by default. Decimal precision reduction (6, 4 or 2 decimals) is opt-in and clearly flagged as lossy; whitespace and STEP comments are always stripped.
- Download the verified result. The headline tells you exactly what you gained ("67 MB → 41 MB, −39%"), and before the download button appears the tool re-parses the output with the same engine our viewer uses — you never get a file that does not open.
What each technique does
Duplicate point merging. Exporters emit an IfcCartesianPoint entity per use, so a structural model with tens of thousands of identical beams carries an enormous cloud of repeated coordinates. The compressor keeps one point per unique position and redirects every reference to it — byte-for-byte identical geometry, dramatically fewer lines.
Unreferenced entity sweep. Deleted elements leave orphaned placements, profiles and property definitions behind; some exporters write entire style libraries nothing uses. The sweep walks the reference graph and removes only what is unreachable — anything with a GlobalId (elements, spaces, relationships) and presentation entities that style visible geometry are never candidates.
Formatting strip. Line breaks, indentation and STEP comments are for humans; parsers ignore them. Always removed, always lossless.
Precision reduction (optional, lossy). A coordinate of
0.30000000000000004 becomes 0.3. At 6 decimals the rounding error
is under a micron for metre-based models — irrelevant for coordination — but it is still a
change to the numbers, so it stays off until you switch it on. Keep your original file.
When to compress — and when to convert instead
Compress when the file must stay IFC: uploading a coordination model to a CDE with size limits, mailing a delivery to a client, archiving milestones, or speeding up imports into analysis software. If the goal is web or mobile viewing and you do not need the BIM data payload, converting IFC to glTF reduces size far more aggressively. And if you only need the data, not the geometry, exporting the properties to Excel turns a 400 MB model into a 5 MB spreadsheet. After compressing, drop the result into the free IFC viewer — same tab, no install — to confirm the model looks exactly the same.
Frequently asked questions
Is compressing an IFC file safe? Will data be lost?
With the default settings, no model data is lost. Stripping whitespace, merging identical cartesian points and removing entities that nothing references are structural cleanups — every element, property set, quantity and relationship survives, and every GlobalId stays exactly the same. The only lossy option is decimal precision reduction, which is off by default and clearly marked: it rounds coordinates and numeric values, so only enable it when sub-millimetre accuracy does not matter.
Will the compressed file still open in Revit, BIMvision or other software?
Yes. The output is a standard STEP/IFC file in the same schema version as the input — nothing proprietary is added. Before offering the download, the tool re-parses the compressed result with the same IFC engine our viewer uses; if that verification fails, you get an error instead of a broken file. You can also open the result in our free viewer with one click to double-check it visually.
How much smaller will my IFC file get?
It depends on the exporter and the model. Files with heavy geometry repetition — structural models with thousands of identical beams, or MEP models full of repeated fittings — tend to benefit most from point deduplication. Files from sloppy exporters gain a lot from the unreferenced-entity sweep. Typical results range from a few percent on already-optimized files to 30-50% on repetitive models, and more if you enable precision reduction. If you need drastic reduction for web viewing, converting to glTF is the better tool.
Which IFC versions are supported?
IFC2x3, IFC4 and IFC4x3 — the schemas produced by Revit, ArchiCAD, Tekla Structures, Allplan and every other IFC-compliant tool. Compressed .ifczip archives are decompressed on the fly, and the output is always a plain .ifc you can zip again.
Is my model uploaded to a server?
No. The whole pipeline — parsing, analysis, rewriting and verification — runs locally in your browser using WebAssembly, in a background thread so the page stays responsive. Your file never leaves your machine, which makes the tool safe for models covered by NDAs or tender confidentiality rules.
Is there a file size limit? Does it work on mobile?
There is no hard limit. Models up to roughly 300 MB work on a typical desktop machine; we show a heads-up above 150 MB. Mobile browsers cap memory more aggressively (we warn above 80 MB), so very large files are better compressed on a desktop.