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What is your favourite gratis IFC viewer?

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    @bernd said:

    @DavidE said:

    @bernd thanks for your comment. I dont know about the IfcAdvancedBrep, but the last update is from may 2022. I recenty had contact with the developers and they are still working on the tool. So I would not ignore this viewer for now. Do you have a test file with a IfcAdvancedBrep?

    wow cool. They had not updated it for years. If they started to do it makes it more interesting.

    https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/issues/586 But I have not had a look at it for a few month now. I could even export them again with Allplan.

    You are right: FZK is not able to open these files. But neither are open IFC Viewer or Solibri as it seems.

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    Thanks for sharing your experience! I highly recommend checking out FreeCAD and looking at IFC files. It is free open-source software that

    provides a dedicated IFC monitor. It provides a user-friendly interface and supports IFC versions. Give it a try, I hope it works well for your business!

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    The operational costs of a viewer would be pretty minor.

    In terms of development there are two things to consider: processing and interface. If the processing is serverside, there's already a lot of great options and I'd say IfcOpenShell is the best bet. If the processing is clientside, the options are ThatOpenCompany's platform but it doesn't scale and tends to fall flat on larger models, or IfcOpenShell-WASM which is super experimental and no idea how it scales.

    For interface, there's tradeoffs with any you pick but none seem to outshine all the others: there's Xeokit, ThatOpenCompany, Cesium, or roll-your-own ThreeJS / BabylonJS. There's also VIM which I haven't investigated.

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    My favourite viewer used to be Areddo from arkey.nl. Unfortunately, when I checked for a new version today, I found it to be an installer of about 190 MB in size. If you use archive.org to find a back version, you will find a maybe dated but extremely small version in a zip file. I even got it to run inside wine. https://web.archive.org/web/20180415060152/http://www.areddo.nl/download/Areddo.zip

    The new installer sadly requires administrator priviledges for installation so it will be a while until I get to test whether there significant improvements.

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    My favorite gratis IFC viewer is BIMcollab ZOOM. It's user-friendly, supports a wide range of IFC formats, and offers robust features for model visualization and issue management. Plus, it integrates well with other BIM tools, enhancing workflow efficiency.

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    OpenIFCViewer, directly from ODA.

    Has Apple ARM support, can do clash detection and ....

    But it asks for an email address and sends you newsletters related

    mostly meant for software and IFC developers ....

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    What about online viewers?

    I would really like ifcopenshell.org viewer to develop so I don't find myself needing to use autodosh's online viewer.

    Am I alone in this dream?

    I would be happy to put some dollars towards developing the viewer but first there should be a prioritised list of tools needed, my needs are...

    1. to easily see areas, volumes and lengths after object selection

    2. measuring tape tool for areas and lengths

    3. select and download data to CSV or similar

    4. easily manipulate views by level, object type, material and so on

    5. download drawings SVG/PDF/DXF where I could show plans, sections and elevations at the same or nominated scale

    I don't know about funding the operational cost of an online viewer

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    @Nigel said:

    What about online viewers?

    What about Speckle ?

    https://speckle.systems

    Maybe not yet all features available but they develop fast.

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