BIMvision — The Complete Guide: A Free IFC Viewer With Measurements, Sections and Quantities
BIMvision from the Polish company Datacomp answers a familiar problem: you received an IFC file and have nothing to open it in. The viewer is entirely free, including for commercial work, with no time limit, and runs on Windows.
BIMvision
Datacomp
A free IFC viewer — open a BIM model, measure, section and take off quantities, without a licence.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- IFC opening — from any BIM tool that exports the format.
- Layers and sections — hide systems and cut the model.
- Measurements — distances taken directly on the model.
- Properties and quantities — all the data of an element, plus simple quantities — volume, area and length — for selected elements.
What is missing
It is a viewer, not an editor — the model cannot be changed. The company separately sells advanced plugins — for example model version comparison, quantity reports and clash detection — but they are not needed for ordinary viewing. The software is not open source, and there is no macOS or Linux version.
Related tools
A viewer that also runs on macOS and Linux — Open IFC Viewer. For open-source IFC editing — Bonsai. For viewing quality-check results — Solibri Anywhere (existing users only).
Open IFC Viewer
Open Design Alliance (ODA)
A free, light IFC viewer, available for Linux and macOS too.
Get it from the vendor
Bonsai (BlenderBIM)
IfcOpenShell
Native IFC editing inside Blender — open-source BIM.
Get it from the vendorSolibri Anywhere
Solibri (Nemetschek)
Solibri’s IFC viewer, now a legacy product — free only for existing users who stay on versions before 26.4.0.
Get it from the vendorFZKViewer
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
An academic viewer for IFC and CityGML — the bridge between BIM and city models.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
BIMvision is the most practical free IFC viewer for Windows — measurements, sections and quantities with no licence.