poka.sh

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IFC

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IFC Building Model.

At a glance
Original creator buildingSMART International, formerly the International Alliance for Interoperability
Purpose Exchange of building information model (BIM) data between design, construction and facility-management software.
Extensions .ifc
Poka parser poka-ifc
Viewer poka-3d-viewer
Depth tier Parser with a shared viewer (see Depth tiers)
Breadth tier B3 Core (see Breadth tiers)

Preview a sample

These are sample files, not yours. Poka opens a sample in your browser: the file is read and parsed on your device and nothing is uploaded.

How much Poka reads

B3 Core. Only the main content type or types are decoded (for example geometry but not materials, layers or annotations, or only one version family). The list of gaps is substantial.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-16: poka-ifc (lib.rs parse_ifc_geometry over ifc-lite-core and ifc-lite-geometry 15.1.0) and the .ifczip wrapper; a native probe ran parse_ifc_geometry and build_scene on all 9 corpus samples (6 .ifc, 3 .ifczip): meshes for every shape-bearing product (IFC2X3: Hvac 5, Structural 16, Infra-Rail 73; IFC4: Architecture 11, project0-openings 9, wall_opening 2). Corpus files are small (largest 225 KB). Covers IFC2X3 and IFC4 geometry; IFC4X3 has no sample and is unverified; IFC5 is not claimed. Confidence is high for IFC2X3 and IFC4 geometry, low for IFC4X3.

What Poka does not read

  • Colours, materials and surface styles (every mesh has colour 0 even though the files define styles and materials)
  • Property sets and quantities, classifications, types, systems and relationships
  • The site, building and storey hierarchy (only counts by element type are shown)
  • Spaces, openings and spatial zones are deliberately not drawn
  • 2D curve and annotation items (skipped with a log message in one sample)
  • Georeferencing and infrastructure alignments (unverified)
  • IFC4X3 as a whole (unverified)
  • Large models (limits of 2000 ms and 128 MB; no truncation flag)
  • A file with no recognisable geometry is an error

Background

The clear-text form is the STEP physical file (ISO 10303-21) carrying an IFC schema. The Library of Congress lists IFC 2x3, IFC 4 and IFC 4.3 among the releases, and ISO 16739-1:2018 as the current standard, with ISO/PAS 16739:2005 and ISO 16739:2013 as earlier editions. Its own text is inconsistent about the IFC 2x3 publication year, so no year is given for that release. Poka decodes the geometry it recognises (extruded solids, faceted B-reps, triangulated face sets, booleans, swept solids and mapped items) into a 3D scene; the schema tables in step.rs, which the IFCXML and IFC JSON readers use, come from the IFC4X3 EXPRESS schema, but the .ifc geometry path does not use them. Meshes carry no colours and property sets are not shown. The corpus holds IFC2X3 and IFC4 samples; IFC4X3 is unverified.

  • IFC in XML (.ifcxml): Listed by the Library of Congress as an XML form of IFC; Poka has its own IFCXML row.
  • Zipped IFC (.ifczip): Listed by the Library of Congress; Poka decodes it through the same code as .ifc (parsers/poka-ifc/src/lib.rs).

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

Software that uses it

  • Bricsys BricsCAD
  • buildingSMART IFC
  • COBie
  • IDA ICE (EQUA)

Sources